Egypt has a history of about five thousand years, and it has the largest population of any Arab country. Egypt is in the northeast corner of Africa, and its coasts are on the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
If Egypt didn’t have the Nile River, it would be almost all desert. It gets only about 2.5 centimeters of rain a year! In the past, every summer the river overflowed its banks because of rains far to the south, in Ethiopia. The floods covered the river valley and left behind rich mud for growing trees, plants and crops. Today a huge dam at Aswan controls the floods.
Egypt is often divided into two parts: Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt in the north. That’s because the Nile flows from south to north into the Mediterranean Sea.
Southern Egypt has low mountains and desert. In the north there are wide valleys around the Nile, with desert to the east and west. North of the capital, Cairo, spreads the huge triangle-shaped Nile Delta, whose fertile land is covered with farms.
In 1882 the British invaded Egypt and took control of it. They wanted control of the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and makes the sea journey from Europe to Asia much shorter. Egypt became officially independent in 1922, but British troops stayed until 1956.
Egypt is home to over 100 million people.
Egypt’s population is growing fast. This puts pressure on its resources, because most people live on a narrow strip of land along the Nile. With so many people in such a small area, everything is crowded – from schools to apartment buildings to hospitals.
Children are highly valued in Egypt, especially in the countryside, where they help out on family farms. Children are expected to take care of their parents when they grow old.
Egypt is home to many kinds of animals and plants, including cheetahs, hyenas, crocodiles and cobras. The best places to see Egypt’s wildlife are its protected areas, which include oases, deserts, mountains, coastlines, river islands and wetlands.
Egyptians have always been close to nature. The ancient Egyptians left paintings and carvings of large animals like elephants, hippos, leopards and cheetahs. These animals were once common in Egypt, but today they are rare there or gone, because of hunting and loss of their habitats.
Hieroglyphs are an ancient Egyptian form of writing, made of little pictures and symbols.
If someone says your handwriting looks like hieroglyphics, they probably mean it’s hard to read! For a long time, nobody knew how to read hieroglyphs. Then, about 200 years ago, scholars cracked the code with the help of a famous stone called the Rosetta Stone, which had the same text written in hieroglyphs and in ancient Greek.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs have even been found outside Egypt – for example, at ancient Egyptian sites in Israel, such as Timna and Beit She’an.
The pyramids:
The pyramids of Egypt are among the largest structures ever built by people. These giant triangle-shaped buildings on the west bank of the Nile were built as tombs for Egyptian kings, called pharaohs.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – and the only one still standing!
Many people think the pyramids were built by slaves, but archaeologists have found that they were mostly built by skilled Egyptian workers, who lived in villages nearby and were given food for their work. How exactly they moved and lifted the giant stones is still a fascinating puzzle.
The Cairo Tower:
The Cairo Tower is 187 meters tall and stands on Gezira Island in the Nile. At the top there’s an observation deck and a revolving restaurant with a view over the whole huge city of Cairo – the restaurant turns all the way around about every 70 minutes. Imagine sitting on a giant spinning top, looking out over Egypt’s capital!
The White Desert:
Far to the southwest of Cairo is one of the most special places not only in Egypt, but in all of Africa – the White Desert, a national park covering a huge area. It’s part of the Sahara and is famous for its white chalk rocks shaped by the wind into amazing forms – some look like giant mushrooms! – and for wildlife such as foxes, jackals, sand cats and more.
Bahariya Oasis:
Egypt is rich in history, and new discoveries about its past keep being made. At Bahariya Oasis, in 1996, an ancient burial site was discovered by accident – reportedly when a donkey’s leg slipped into a hole! It’s nicknamed the Valley of the Golden Mummies, because many of the mummies found there were decorated with gold. The area also has the ruins of an ancient temple.
🛷 Sandboarding in Egypt:
The people of Cairo almost never see snow – it fell for one night in December 2013, for the first time in more than 100 years! Maybe that’s one reason sandboarding has become popular on Egypt’s sand dunes. It’s like snowboarding, but instead of snow you slide down giant dunes, surrounded by amazing desert views.
❓ The mysteries of the Sphinx:
The Great Sphinx of Giza is a huge statue with the body of a lion and the head of a person. It’s one of the largest statues in the world carved from a single piece of rock, and it’s full of mysteries: Who built it exactly, and when? Whose face does it show? What was it for? And what happened to its nose? Even after lots of research on one of the most famous ancient monuments in the world, many questions are still unanswered.
