Alexandria & the Nile Delta

The Delta was Lower Egypt, the northern kingdom joined to the valley around 3100 BC, and many of its capitals now lie under fields and villages. Bubastis, near Zagazig, was the city of the cat goddess Bastet; Ramesses II built his capital, Pi-Ramesses, in the eastern Delta; and Tanis became the seat of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties, whose royal tombs yielded silver coffins and gold masks in 1939. Sais, in the western Delta, gave its name to the 26th Dynasty.

Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BC, and under the Ptolemies it became the greatest city of the Greek world, with the Pharos lighthouse and the Library and Museum where scholars such as Euclid and Eratosthenes worked. Under Rome it was the empire's grain port and then a centre of early Christian theology and the seat of the patriarchs. After the Arab conquest of 641 the capital moved inland, and the city shrank for centuries. The Crusaders were defeated at Mansoura in 1250, and in 1799 French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone near Rashid.

Muhammad Ali revived Alexandria with the Mahmoudiya canal, and cotton made the Delta rich in the 19th century. Alexandria grew into a cosmopolitan port of Greeks, Italians, Jews and Levantines, most of whom left after 1956. Port Said and Ismailia were founded in 1859 and 1863 to build the Suez Canal. British forces clashed with Egyptian police in Ismailia in January 1952, and in 1956 Port Said was attacked during the Suez Crisis.

Alexandrians see themselves as more relaxed and more Mediterranean than Cairenes, with their own accent, seafood and love of the Corniche on summer evenings. The city's cosmopolitan past lives on in the poetry of Constantine Cavafy, Lawrence Durrell's novels, Italianate buildings and old Greek cafés and pastry shops. It is also a stronghold of conservative religious movements, and both sides of that identity are real.

The Delta villages are the heartland of the fellahin, the farming families, and their culture centres on land, kinship and religious festivals. The largest is the moulid of Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta, a 13th-century Sufi saint whose festival draws huge crowds each autumn; the moulid of Ibrahim al-Desouki in Desouk is another major pilgrimage. Many Copts live in the Delta, and the Wadi El Natrun monasteries in Beheira are among the oldest centres of Christian monasticism.

The Canal cities have their own character: Port Said as a free-trade port with a strong local pride, and Ismailia with a garden-city layout and folk music played on the simsimiyya, a lyre popular along the canal.

Alexandria, with about five to six million people, is Egypt's second city and main seaport, strung for many kilometres along the coast. The Delta governorates hold tens of millions more, one of the densest farming populations in the world, with Tanta, Mansoura, Zagazig, Mahalla al-Kubra, Damanhur and Shibin El Kom as the main towns. Villages have spread into one another along the canals, and farmland is steadily lost to red-brick building.

Farming remains central: long-staple cotton, rice in the salty north, wheat, clover for animals, vegetables and fruit. Mahalla al-Kubra is the heart of the textile industry, Damietta is known for furniture workshops, Port Said lives from the canal and its free zone, and Alexandria has refineries, factories and the port. Fishing continues on the coastal lakes of Manzala, Burullus and Idku.

Life follows the heat and the harvest. Farmers start at dawn, markets rotate between towns on fixed days, and in summer the Corniche fills late into the night. Pollution of canals and lakes, coastal erosion and the threat of rising sea levels to the northern Delta are pressing concerns.

Alexandria eats from the sea. Fish restaurants in Anfushi and along the Corniche grill or fry the catch chosen at the counter, and sayadeya, fish cooked with rice browned with caramelised onions, is a favourite of the coast. Kebda iskandarani, liver fried with garlic, chilli and green pepper and stuffed into bread, is the Alexandrian street snack eaten across Egypt, and shrimp and calamari are cheaper here than anywhere inland.

The Delta countryside is the land of dairy and rice. Gebna domiati, a soft white cheese named after Damietta, is eaten at every breakfast, and mish, a sharp aged cheese, is a village staple. Roz me'ammar is rice cooked with milk, butter and cream, and hamam mahshi, pigeon stuffed with rice or freekeh, draws on the tall mud dovecotes still seen in many villages. Feteer meshaltet, a flaky layered pastry, is baked in village ovens and eaten with honey or old cheese.

In Tanta, the moulid season brings sugared nuts, roasted chickpeas and moulid sweets to the market stalls. Old-fashioned Alexandrian patisseries still sell pastries from the city's Greek and Italian past.

Alexandria is a city of layers along a long Mediterranean waterfront. At the tip of the Eastern Harbour, the Citadel of Qaitbay stands on the site of the Pharos lighthouse, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina rises further along the Corniche. The ancient city is represented by Pompey's Pillar and the Serapeum site, the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa and the Roman theatre at Kom el-Dikka, with the Alexandria National Museum and the Graeco-Roman Museum holding its finds. The Montaza palace gardens lie to the east, beaches line the coast in both directions, and Abu Qir Bay was the scene of Nelson's Battle of the Nile in 1798.

East of Alexandria, Rosetta has restored Ottoman houses, mosques and the fort near where the Rosetta Stone was found. Inland, the Wadi El Natrun monasteries welcome visitors, and Tanta's mosque of al-Badawi is the focus of the Delta's great moulid. The Delta farmland itself — canals, water buffalo, dovecotes and palm-lined fields — is the backdrop to every journey, with birdlife on Lake Burullus and the resort of Ras El Bar where the Nile meets the sea at Damietta.

In the east, Tanis at San el-Hagar has fallen granite statues and obelisks, and Tell Basta near Zagazig preserves Bubastis. Port Said has the Suez Canal Authority building and a ferry across to Port Fuad, while Ismailia has tree-lined colonial streets and beaches on Lake Timsah.