Egypt

Five millennia of civilisation along the Nile, from the first pharaohs to the modern Arab republic.

Egypt is among the world's oldest continuous civilisations, born when the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were welded into a single state around 3100 BCE. For three thousand years pharaonic dynasties raised the pyramids, temples and a sophisticated bureaucracy along the Nile, before the land passed in turn to Persian, Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine rule. The Arab conquest of 639-642 made Egypt a centre of Islamic learning and power under the Fatimids, Ayyubids and Mamluks; Ottoman suzerainty after 1517 gave way to the reforming dynasty of Muhammad Ali and, from 1882, to British occupation. Formal independence in 1922 and the Free Officers' revolution of 1952 culminated in the proclamation of the Republic in 1953, since when Egypt has been a pivotal power in the Arab world.