Egypt

جمهورية مصر العربية Gumhūriyyat Maṣr el-ʿArabiyyah Arab Republic of Egypt
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem: Bilady, Bilady, Bilady
Capital (and largest city)	Cairo 30°2′N 31°13′E
Official languages	Arabic; Egyptian Arabic is spoken
Government	Semi-Presidential Republic
- President	Hosni Mubarak
- Prime Minister	Ahmed Nazif
Establishment
- First Dynasty	c.3150 BCE
- Independence granted	February 28, 1922
- Republic declared	June 18, 1953
Area
- Total	1,001,449 km² (30th) 386,660 sq mi
- Water (%)	0.632
Population
- 2007 estimate	82,982,364 (11th)
- 1996 census	59,312,914
- Density	74 /km² (120th) 192 /sq mi
GDP (PPP)	2004 estimate
- Total	$305.253 billion (32nd)
- Per capita	$4,317 (112th)
HDI (2006)	0.702 (medium) (111th)
Currency	Egyptian pound/al-Gunaih al-Masri (LE) (EGP)
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
- Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Internet TLD	.eg
Calling code	+20

Egypt (Egyptian: km.t ; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ Kīmi ; Arabic: مصر Miṣr ; Egyptian Arabic: Máṣr), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country in North Africa (with the Sinai Peninsula in Asia). Covering an area of about 1,001,450 square kilometers (386,560 square miles), Egypt borders Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, and Palestine and Israel to the east; the northern coast borders the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern coast borders the Red Sea.

Egypt is the fifteenth most populous country in the world, and the second most populous country in Africa (after Nigeria). The vast majority of its 78.8 million people (2006) live near the banks of the Nile River (about 40,000 km² or 15,450 sq miles) where the only arable agricultural land is found. Large areas of land form part of the Sahara Desert and are sparsely inhabited. Around half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo (the largest city in the Arab World, Africa, and the Middle East), Alexandria and other major towns in the Nile Delta.

Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization and some of the world's most ancient and important monuments, including the Giza Pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza; the southern city of Luxor contains a particularly large number of ancient artifacts such as the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. Today, Egypt is widely regarded as a main political and cultural centre of the Arab World and Middle East.

Etymology

km.t (Egypt) in hieroglyphs

• One of the ancient Egyptian names of the country, km.t, or "black land", is derived from the fertile black soils deposited by the Nile floods, distinct from the 'red land' (dSr.t) of the desert. The name is realized as kīmi and kīmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Kymeía.

• Miṣr, the Arabic and official name for modern Egypt (Egyptian Arabic: Maṣr), is of Semitic origin directly cognate with the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם (Mitzráyim), meaning "the two straits" (a reference to the dynastic separation of upper and lower Egypt), and possibly means "a country" or "a state". Miṣr in Arabic also means "a country" or "a state" or "frontier-land".

• The English name "Egypt" came via the Latin word Aegyptus derived from the ancient Greek word Αίγυπτος (Aigyptos). According to Strabo, Αίγυπτος (Aigyptos), in ancient Greek meant "below the Aegean" (Aἰγαίου ὑπτίως, "Aegaeou uptiōs"), and was formed by the combination of the two words. It has also been suggested that the word is a corruption of the ancient Egyptian phrase ḥwt-k3-ptḥ meaning "home of the Ka (Soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple of the god Ptah at Memphis.97

History

The Nile Valley has been a site of continuous human habitation since at least the Paleolithic era. Traces of these early peoples appear in the form of artifacts and rock carvings along the terraces of the Nile and in the desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a grain-grinding culture using the earliest type of sickle blades had been replaced by another culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers using stone tools. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastor