63 Facts About Egypt

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula.

Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast.

Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE.

Egypt's long and rich cultural heritage is an integral part of its national identity, which reflects its unique transcontinental location being simultaneously Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African.

Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, but was largely Islamised in the seventh century and remains a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, albeit with a significant Christian minority, along with other lesser practiced faiths.

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In 1978, Egypt signed the Camp David Accords, officially withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and recognising Israel.

Egypt is considered to be a regional power in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world, and a middle power worldwide.

Egypt is a founding member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the African Union, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the World Youth Forum.

The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c BCE, which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza pyramids.

Arabs founded the capital of Egypt called Fustat, which was later burned down during the Crusades.

Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire.

Egypt remained semi-autonomous under the Mamluks until it was invaded by the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.

Egypt constructed a military state with around four percent of the populace serving the army to raise Egypt to a powerful positioning in the Ottoman Empire in a way showing various similarities to the Soviet strategies conducted in the 20th century.

Egypt introduced conscription of the male peasantry in 19th century Egypt, and took a novel approach to create his great army, strengthening it with numbers and in skill.

Policy that Mohammad Ali Pasha followed during his reign explains partly why the numeracy in Egypt compared to other North-African and Middle-Eastern countries increased only at a remarkably small rate, as investment in further education only took place in the military and industrial sector.

Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956; his hostile approach towards Israel and economic nationalism prompted the beginning of the Second Arab-Israeli War, in which Israel (with support from France and the United Kingdom) occupied the Sinai peninsula and the Canal.

Egypt launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while clamping down on religious and secular opposition.

In 2007, Amnesty International released a report alleging that Egypt had become an international centre for torture, where other nations send suspects for interrogation, often as part of the War on Terror.

On 28 November 2011, Egypt held its first parliamentary election since the previous regime had been in power.

Egypt sees the dam as an existential threat, fearing that the dam will reduce the amount of water it receives from the Nile.

Egypt is bordered by Libya to the west, the Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east.

Apart from the Nile Valley, the majority of Egypt's landscape is desert, with a few oases scattered about.

Egypt includes parts of the Sahara desert and of the Libyan Desert.

Egypt is the driest and the sunniest country in the world, and most of its land surface is desert.

Egypt signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 9 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 2 June 1994.

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Where many CBD National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans neglect biological kingdoms apart from animals and plants, Egypt's plan was unusual in providing balanced information about all forms of life.

Egypt has the oldest continuous parliamentary tradition in the Arab world.

In 1989, Egypt was designated as a major non-NATO ally of the United States.

In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, including Egypt, have signed a joint letter to the UNHRC defending China's treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Gulf monarchies, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, have pledged billions of dollars to help Egypt overcome its economic difficulties since the overthrow of Morsi.

Egypt has played a historical role as a mediator in resolving various disputes in the Middle East, most notably its handling of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the peace process.

Egypt is a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations.

In 2008, Egypt was estimated to have two million African refugees, including over 20, 000 Sudanese nationals registered with UNHCR as refugees fleeing armed conflict or asylum seekers.

Egypt's authorities do not release figures on death sentences and executions, despite repeated requests over the years by human rights organisations.

Egypt has a developed energy market based on coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro power.

Egypt has huge reserves of gas, estimated at 2, 180 cubic kilometres, and LNG up to 2012 exported to many countries.

Egypt is counting on top liquid natural gas exporter Qatar to obtain additional gas volumes in summer, while encouraging factories to plan their annual maintenance for those months of peak demand, said EGPC chairman, Tarek El Barkatawy.

Egypt produces its own energy, but has been a net oil importer since 2008 and is rapidly becoming a net importer of natural gas.

Egypt is currently planning to build its first nuclear power plant in El Dabaa, in the northern part of the country, with $25 billion in Russian financing.

Transport in Egypt is centred around Cairo and largely follows the pattern of settlement along the Nile.

Cairo Metro in Egypt is the first of only two full-fledged metro systems in Africa and the Arab World.

Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt considered the most important centre of the maritime transport in the Middle East, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.

Over that period, Egypt achieved the elimination of open defecation in rural areas and invested in infrastructure.

Egypt is the most populated country in the Arab world and the third most populous on the African continent, with about 95 million inhabitants as of 2017.

Egypt's population was estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded the country in 1798.

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Egypt's people are highly urbanised, being concentrated along the Nile, in the Delta and near the Suez Canal.

Egypt has the largest Muslim population in the Arab world, and the sixth world's largest Muslim population, and home for of the world's Muslim population.

Egypt has the largest Christian population in the Middle East and North Africa.

Egypt is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country with Islam as its state religion.

Egypt was a Christian country before the 7th century, and after Islam arrived, the country was gradually Islamised into a majority-Muslim country.

Egypt emerged as a centre of politics and culture in the Muslim world.

Egypt used to have a large Roman Catholic community, largely made up of Italians and Maltese.

Egypt is the home of Al-Azhar University, which is today the world's "most influential voice of establishment Sunni Islam" and is, by some measures, the second-oldest continuously operating university in the world.

Egypt was ranked 94th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, down from 92nd in 2019.

Egypt is a recognised cultural trend-setter of the Arabic-speaking world.

Egypt's renaissance peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the work of people like Muhammad Abduh, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, Muhammad Loutfi Goumah, Tawfiq el-Hakim, Louis Awad, Qasim Amin, Salama Moussa, Taha Hussein and Mahmoud Mokhtar.

Egypt is considered the leading country in the field of cinema in the Arab world.

Ramadan has a special flavour in Egypt, celebrated with sounds, lights and much flare that many Muslim tourists from the region flock to Egypt to witness during Ramadan.

Egypt was 4th place in the football tournament in the 1928 and the 1964 Olympics.

Egypt has won the Squash World Championships four times, with the last title being in 2017.

In 1999, Egypt hosted the IHF World Men's Handball Championship, and hosted it again in 2021.

Egypt has won in the African Men's Handball Championship five times, being the best team in Africa.

Egypt has taken part in the Summer Olympic Games since 1912 and has hosted several other international competitions including the first Mediterranean Games in 1951, the 1991 All-Africa Games, the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup and the 1953, 1965 and 2007 editions of the Pan Arab Games.