Egypt

Long known for its ancient civilization, Egypt is the largest Arab country with an estimated population of 104, 239, 000 (2022). It is in northeastern corner of Africa with Cairo as the administrative capital.

Egypt’s heartland, the Nile River valley and delta, was the home of one of the main civilizations of the ancient Middle East and was the site of one the world’s earliest urban and literate societies, like in Mesopotamia. Though, Republic is its ruling system, the pharaonic Egypt thrived for some 3000 years through a series of native dynasties that were also interspersed with brief periods of foreign rule. After Alexander the Great conquered the region in 323 BCE, urban Egypt became an integral part of the Hellenistic world. Under the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, an advanced literate society thrived in the city of Alexandria, before it was conquered by the Romans (The Byzantine Empire) in 30 BCE and then by Arab Muslim armies in 639-642 CE.