Egypt

Egypt covers a total area of about 1,002,000 km2, of which only about 78,990 km2 — some 7.8 percent — is inhabited. The country stretches about 1,080 km from north to south and about 1,100 km at its maximum extent from east to west. It lies between latitudes 22 and 32 degrees north of the equator and between longitudes 24 and 37 degrees east of the Greenwich line.

The Egyptian terrain consists of a vast desert plateau interrupted by the Nile Valley and Delta, which together occupy about 4 percent of the total country area. Egypt is located in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its heartland, the Nile River valley and delta, was the home of one of the principal civilizations of the ancient Middle East.

The Western Desert covers about 680,650 km2, or 68 percent of Egypt's area, and includes the Siwa Oasis and the Qattara Depression. The Eastern Desert covers about 225,000 km2, or 28 percent of the national territory, and is rich in natural resources including gold, coal and oil. The Sinai Peninsula covers about 61,000 km2, or about 6 percent of Egypt's area, and is shaped like a triangle between the Mediterranean and the gulfs of Aqaba and Suez.

Mount Kātrīnā, also known as Mount Catherine, is the highest point of Egypt, reaching 8,668 feet (2,642 meters) in the Sinai Peninsula.

Its territory is bounded on the west by Libya and on the south by Sudan, while its eastern frontier runs against the Gaza Strip and Israel. ^{2Country profile – Egypt (AQUASTAT) · Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ↗}

The western boundary with Libya extends 1,115 km, and the southern boundary with Sudan runs 1,280 km. To the east, Egypt adjoins the Gaza Strip and Israel. ^{2Country profile – Egypt (AQUASTAT) · Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ↗ 1Basic Information · Egypt State Information Service (SIS) ↗}

Egypt's seaboard is divided between two bodies of water. The Mediterranean Sea washes 995 km of the northern coast, while the Red Sea accounts for 1,941 km of coastline to the east. ^{1Basic Information · Egypt State Information Service (SIS) ↗}

Egypt lies in the dry arid region, with the northern region forming the exception to that rule. The country has only two prominent seasons: a hot summer running from May to October and a mild winter running from November to April.

Summer temperatures are extremely high, reaching 38°C to 43°C, with extremes of 49°C recorded in the southern and western deserts. Rainfall across the country is very low, irregular and unpredictable. It ranges from a maximum of about 200 mm in the northern coastal region to nearly zero in the south, with an annual average of 51 mm.

The River Nile is the main source of water for Egypt, carrying an annual allocated flow of 55.5 km3 under the Nile Waters Agreement signed in 1959 between Egypt and Sudan. The river extends about 1,532 km from Egypt's southern border to the Mediterranean Sea. North of Cairo it splits into the Damietta and Rashid branches.

The Nile Basin Initiative is an intergovernmental partnership of 10 Nile Basin countries: Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, The Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Eritrea participates in the initiative as an observer. The partnership promotes sustainable management and development of the shared Nile Basin water resources.

Egypt's population stood at 107,904,841 according to the population clock of 25 July 2025.

In the Nile Valley and Delta, population density reaches more than 1,165 inhabitants per km2. In the desert, by contrast, density falls to about 1.2 people per square kilometre.

The capital is Cairo, one of the world's largest urban agglomerations. Manufacturing and trade have increasingly outstripped agriculture as the largest sectors of the national economy.

Its form of government is a multiparty republic with two legislative houses. The lower chamber, the House of Representatives, comprises 596 seats, while the upper chamber, the Senate, holds 300.

The official language of the state is Arabic.

Egypt's recorded past begins with political unification. Around 3000 BCE the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt united, beginning the successive dynasties that developed great cultural traditions, writing and the pyramids. The Old Kingdom, about 2649 to 2130 BCE, was an incredibly dynamic period of Egyptian history. The capital of the Old Kingdom of Egypt has some extraordinary funerary monuments, including rock tombs, ornate mastabas, temples and pyramids.

Arab Muslim armies conquered Egypt between 639 and 642 CE, after which an Arabic vernacular gradually replaced the Egyptian language as the common means of spoken discourse. In 642 the Arab conquest brought Egypt into the Islamic world, and in 969 Cairo was established as capital.

In 1517 the Ottoman Empire defeated the Mamluks and established control over Egypt that lasted until 1798 when Napoleon I led a French army in a short occupation of the country. The United Kingdom occupied Egypt in 1882 and continued to exert a strong influence on the country until after the Second World War. Egypt gained independence in 1922 when Fuad I became king, although British influence remained significant.

In 1952 a military coup installed a revolutionary regime in Egypt that promoted a combination of socialism and Pan-Arab nationalism. In June 1953 the coup leader Muhammad Najib became president as Egypt was declared a republic.

In June 1967 an Israeli pre-emptive attack defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria, leaving Israel in control of Sinai up to the Suez Canal. In 1979 Egypt became the first of the Arab states to make peace with the Jewish state, after leading them in a series of wars against Israel. In October 1981 President Sadat was assassinated by Islamist extremists and was succeeded by Vice-President Hosni Mubarak.

The cutting of the Suez Canal consumed almost ten years of work carried out by Egyptian labor. The waters of the two seas met on 18 August 1869, bringing to an end that decade of toil and creating an invaluable artery for world navigation. Navigation through the canal began for the first time on 17 November 1869. The inauguration ceremony held that day was a legendary affair that drew six thousand guests.

By 2015 the overall length of the canal stood at 193.30 km, of which bypasses accounted for 113.3 km. A planned phase completed by the Suez Canal Authority in January 2010 raised the canal's permissible draft to 66 ft. That increase allowed the waterway to accommodate 100 percent of container ships, 92.7 percent of the bulk carrier fleet and 61.2 percent of the tanker fleet.

In a historic speech delivered in Alexandria on 6 July 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal. It reopened for international navigation in June 1975.

Egypt holds seven inscribed World Heritage sites, of which six are cultural and one is natural. A further thirty-four sites stand on the country's tentative list.

The six cultural properties are Abu Mena, Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis, Historic Cairo, Memphis and its Necropolis, the Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae, and the Saint Catherine Area.

Memphis, whose fame comes from its being the first capital of Ancient Egypt, lies in the center of the floodplain on the western side of the Nile. More than thirty-eight pyramids stand at Memphis and its necropolis, including the three pyramids of Giza, of which the Great Pyramid of Khufu is the only surviving wonder of the ancient world. The limestone step pyramid of Djoser is the oldest pyramid to be constructed. The site preserves more than nine thousand rock-cut tombs as well as ornate mastabas, temples and pyramids.

The Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae contain the Temples of Ramses II at Abu Simbel and the Sanctuary of Isis at Philae. These monuments were saved from the rising waters of the Nile by the International Campaign that UNESCO launched between 1960 and 1980 to save the temples. Philae, above the first cataract, was the great Ptolemaic sanctuary of the goddess Isis and the final bastion of ancient Egyptian religion.

Tucked away amid the modern urban area of Cairo lies one of the world's oldest Islamic cities, with its famous mosques, madrasas, hammams and fountains. Historic Cairo developed further in the Ayyubid and Mamluk eras, when the Fatimid plan was enlarged outside the walls into a cohesive urban fabric. The building of a new Cairo in the 19th century allowed Historic Cairo to remain largely intact.

The Saint Catherine Area stands at the foot of Mount Horeb, known and revered by Muslims as Jebel Musa, and is sacred to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2002 and covers 60,100 hectares in South Sinai. The monastery of Saint Catherine, founded in the 6th century, is the oldest Christian monastery still in use for its initial function.

Egypt's only natural World Heritage property is Wadi Al-Hitan (Whale Valley), on the World Heritage List since 2005 and the country's sole natural site.

Egypt's presence on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is anchored in practices of everyday life as much as in performance. Koshary, the daily life dish, is inscribed together with the practices associated with it. Henna likewise appears on the list, cited for its rituals and its aesthetic and social practices.

Other traditions are recorded in categories that signal vulnerability or distinctiveness. Handmade weaving in Upper Egypt (Sa'eed) and traditional hand puppetry are inscribed on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. The Al-Sirah Al-Hilaliyyah epic and the Tahteeb stick game are among Egypt's entries on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage lists.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina concentrates the country's modern library and museum culture in a single institution. Its main library is joined by six specialized libraries, among them the Taha Hussein Library for the visually impaired and the Children's Library. The institution also houses four major museums: the Sadat Museum, the Antiquities Museum, the Manuscripts Museum and the History of Science Museum. Its Manuscripts Center pursues the depths of Arab and Islamic manuscript heritage through indexing, verification and study.

Its currency is the Egyptian pound, divided into 100 piasters.

Real GDP grew 5.3 percent in the first half of FY26, covering July to December 2025, up from 3.9 percent a year earlier. Central government debt declined to 82.5 percent of GDP at end-FY25 from 90.1 percent at end-FY24. The primary surplus reached 3.5 percent of GDP in FY25, even as interest payments remained high at 10.6 percent of GDP.

As of end-February 2026, official foreign reserves and other foreign currency assets reached US$67.5 billion. The Central Bank of Egypt publishes daily CBE exchange rates in EGP, including buying and selling rates for the US dollar and the euro. For the fourth quarter of 2026 the Central Bank targets inflation of 7.0 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points, on average.

More than 700,000 subsidies have been delivered to low-income households across Egypt. As of December 2025, 4.66 million households had benefited from the Takaful and Karama cash transfer programme. Through the World Bank's Inclusive Housing Finance Program, more than 693,000 low-income households have been enabled to access formal, affordable housing.