For more than 600 miles- from Abu Simbel to Cairo- narrow fields full of irrigated crops line the banks. The cloudless sky adds its blessing, the hot jun nurturing no fewer than two harvests year. The early Egyptians saw divinity in the sun which returned faithfully every day: the named it Ra, And raised great temples in its honor.

  What happened to these ancient Egyptians? Believe it or not, their descendants still live along the Nile. They accepted Christianity as taught them by Saint Mark, and founded on of Christendom’s Oldest churches. Called Copts, they still play a significant role in their country’s affairs, and Coptic Churches can be found in almost all Egyptian towns.

  Between 1100 and 332 B.C came Libyans, Persians and black Africans from Nubia. Then, around the 7^th century, Arabs started to pour into Egypt’s rich delta, adding their own Languages and customs which still thrive today.

  Egypt has always held an irresistible fascination for tourists and it’s not difficult to understand why.

  Pyramids, Palms, the Nile, the desert, the Sphinx- all these are enough to make any traveler dream

  Of at least one trip to Egypt in a life time. But scratch the surface of a pyramid and you’ll find and ancient civilization are of inestimable value to archaeologists and an thropologists, theologians and philosophers , art historians and other scholars from almost every field of culture and learning and it is this deeply rooted sense of history, which you can sense even today , that makes the country unique .as you visit the four mighty stone figures at the Ramesis II monument in Abu Simbel, it’s impossible not to feel a certain awe a bout a civilization which gave a pharaoh the status of a god. 

  Walking through the sacred temples of Luxor and Karnak an the eerie city of the dead at Thebes will make you realize how serious these ancient Egyptians were about their religion. Elsewhere, you’ll Constantly see the sights and hear the names that make up the colourfull mosaic of Egyptian life: Memphics, Horus, Tutankhamon, Antony and Cleopatra, EL-Alamein, Alexandria, the Suez Canal. But just as the Rosetta stone provided the clue to ancient hieroglyphs, the key to the heart of modern Egypt is, undeniably, Cairo.

  Compared to the eternal life of the river, Cairo is a "new" city-only 1,000 years old. In the shadow Of Giza's Pyramids, Cairenes have raised countless monuments to the glory of Islam and made their city the cultural capital of Arabic civilization. Throuhgout the world, Moslems still look to Cairo as the treasure-hous of Islamic art, architecture and learning. As capital of the most populous Arab nation on earth, Cairo confronts urgent problems. Its population grows at the incredible rate of nearly 4,000 persons a day; even crumbing medieval tombs have been converted to dwellings in an effort to house them all. The city’s streets are thronged with armies of pedestrians and legions of cars, all stirring up the blanket of fin desert dust which infrequent and brief rains can never wash away. Noise is a constant bother. Public services are so overtaxed that buses run with passengers on the fenders and hanging out of the windows.

   With all its excess population, Cairo is not the land of do-it- yourself, but of have- someone-do-it-for-you.  From carrying your luggage to fetching a newspaper. You’ll get more help than you need for a small tip. But despite difficult problems. Egyptians are eternally hopeful.  Every day the Newspapers announce another momentous new project designed to catapult the country into the future. The plans may will get bogged down in skeins of red tape, but one can’t give up hope. After all, the Aswan High Dam performed modern miracles, controlling the annual flooding  of the Nile which had occurred since beginning much needed electricity for the country’s requirements. In any case, it doesn’t help to worry.

   Long-suffering   Cairenes draw confidence from their city’s triumphant past and their country’s Glotious   history: Egypt is eternal, the Nile’s not going to stop flowing. As for the inconveniences of city life, ma’alish! Never mind!

A Brief History
   Years, even centuries, lose meaning as one leaps back in time to the misty ages of 3000 B.C*Before this date, Egyptian life is shrouded in mystery, though we know that the in habitants were an artistically gifted and vigorous people. They already had sophisticated hieroglyphic symbol system, and when they invented pounding strips of Nile reeds together the written history of ancient Egypt began to unfold.

Old and Middle Kingdoms
King Menes ( 1st Dynasty,3000B.C ) united upper and Lower Egypt, and was the first to wear the “double crown “so often seen in Pharaonic art. The capital was at Memphis, a short distance south of Cairo. Unity brought Egypt wealth, power and progress, and some three centuries later the Old Kingdom ( 2780-2250 B.C ) headed by King Zoser of the 3rd Dynasty was established. He built the step Pyramid of Saqqara, inaugurating the era of the great Pyramid. Within 200 years mathematics and man power organization advanced so far that Cheops and his son Chephren were able to construct the colossal Pyramids and Sphinx in Giza. Crowning this astounding human achievement with the halo of divinity, pharaohs of the 5the Dynasty ( 2440-2315 B.C ) proclaimed themselves to be sons of the great sun good Ra. But saying one is a god and being a god are different matters, and as time wore on royal authority declined. The Old Kingdom was brought to an end by civil war around 2250 B.C.

   The Middle Kingdom lasted over four centuries ( 2000-1570B.C. ) during which time Egypt re-established itself as a rich and strong nation. Pharaohs stood at the top of a feudal order, and powerful nobles controlled each of the nomes ( provinces ) of the King dom. Supported by his vassals, the King marched at the head of his army from the new capital at Thebes ( Luxor ) south to Nubia and east into Palestine, conquering all in his path. Foreign adventures could be afforded because of the immense new wealth brought by significant advances in irrigation, especially in the desert province of Fayyoum.

   As the conquerors fortunes increased, their lands became more and more desirable to Egypt’s warlike neighbours. One enemy people, the Hyksos, had a secret weapon to overcome even the bravest and most determined Egyptian foot soldier: the horse chariot. When in the 17th century B.C. they rolled swiftly across Sinai and into the fertile delta, the Pharaohs were forced to retreat to Thebes (Luxor). Triumphantly the Hyksos chiseled signs of their victories on the walls of tombs and temples, where figures of horses and wheeled vehicles remain to this day. For a century the Hyksos ruled Lower Egypt, but their unassailable power stopped where the chariots could go on farther, at the southern tip of the flat and easily crossed delta.

Historical Key
Egyptian history is so long it soon becomes bewildering. (By the time you’ve mastered it all, you’ll be ready for a Ph.D.) Here’s a simplified key to the major periods:

   Some of Egypt’s greatest rulers were those of the 18^th Dynasty. The three Pharaohs named Thutmose vastly extended the empire’s borders. Hatshepsut, wife of Thutmose II and stepmother of Thutmose III, ruled for a time as queen of Egypt, and built herself a fabulous funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari. Amenophis III ( 1417-1379 B.C.) reigned when New Kingdom Egypt was at its glittering zenith. He made large contributions to the building of the Great Temple of Amon at Karnak as well as two gigantic seated figures called the Colossi of Memnon, fashioned in his own image. His son Amenophis IV ignored statecraft and warfare to concentrate on mystical matters, and decreed a new religion: the age-old pantheon of Egyptian gods was to be displaced by the One True God, Aton, whose symbol was a simple solar disc with beneficent rays extending to earth. Amenophis changed his own name to Akhenaton (“He who Pleases Aton”), and with Queen Nefertiti moved his capital to the place now called Tell EL-Amarna in Middle Egypt. But he made bitter enemies of the powerful priests of Amon at Thebes. When he died, the country was in disarray and his young son-in-law Tutankhaton (1361-1351 B.C.-who later changed his name to Tutankhamon) had such a short reign that it was impossible to restore order.

  The 18^th Dynasty ended as power was usurped by an energetic and able soldier, Ramesis I, founder of the 19^th Dynasty. His successor, Seti, won back all of Egypt’s foreign possession by renewed conquests. Then came Ramesis 11. This Pharaoh had some trouble maintaining the empire, but none in becoming the greatest and most prolific builder Egypt had ever know. His long reign ( 1304-1237 B.C.) saw the huge templer rise at Abu Simbel, and  the great hypostyle hall finished at Karnak, plus countless other gigantic monuments, usually containing a generous ration of statues in his own image. With a firm hand Ramesis 11 subdued the Semitic tribes which had been cause of disorder in his eastern provinces. One tribe, the Israelites, he kept under strict control for years before allowing them to leave captivity in Egypt and return to the land of their forefathers.

   Pharaohs of the 20^th Dynasty preserved Egypt’s greatness until 1100 B.C. After that, although later dynasties struggled to return to past glory none could regain it. Foreign invasion became frequent, and by 332 B.C. the last Egyptian Pharaohs had fallen from the throne forever. Alexander the Great conquered the country with little resistance, and Pharaonic Egypt’s fabled life was at an end.

Under Greece and Rome
   When Alexander died and the Hellenistic empire fell in 323 B.C., his generals seized control of the fragments. The governor of Egypt, Ptolemy, assumed the title of Pharaoh in 305 but the country was divided into two cultures now, and the Hellenistic dominated the Egyptian. Alexandria, the conqueror’s city on the Mediterranean shore, was the most civilized and important in the Hellenistic world. But the power of learning and the excellent library which were Alexandria’s glory could do little against the legions of Rome.

   For twenty years (51-30 B.C.) Queen Cleopatra V11 used wit and charm –first on Caesar, then on the Roman general Mark Antony- to keep her country free (see box). But Caesar’s heir, Octavius ( later Augustus), was immune to her fascination and set out to take control of Egypt. When Mark Antony was defeated at the naval battle of Actium ( 30 B.C.)   the queen committed suicide,

Cleopatra 
    Lots of Ptolemaic princesses were given the name Cleopatra but it was Cleopatra V11 ( 69-30 B.C.) who left her mark on history. Married to her younger brother Ptolemy X11 when she was seventeen years old, she later overthrew him with Caesar’s aid. She followed the conqueror to Rome, deserted her second husband- another brother- and eventually bore a son, whom she named Caesarion. ( It has never been unquestionably established that Caesar ion’s true father was Julius Caesar, but it suited everybody to believe it at the time.) For a while Caesarion co-reigned with his mother as Ptolemy XIV.

   Some time after Caesar’s murder, Marc Antony showed up in Egypt and also fell quickly and completely under Cleopatra’s bewitching spell.

   They were married in 36 B.C. At the end of her reign, after the crushing naval defeat at Actium, she had a servant bring her a basket of figs, containing a serpent. She bit a fig and the snake bit her. Despite the evident charms she seems to have had for Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, historians record that Cleopatra was neither strikingly beautiful nor popular with the Romans, who either feared or despised her. And Hellenistic Egypt died with her. For centuries to come the land would be only a distant province of the Roman Empire, ruled first from Rome and later from Constantinople.

The Arab Empire
   The wave of conquering armies which poured forth from Arabia in the 7^th century is one of the most baffling Phenomena in history. Before the Prophet Mohammed’s time, the Arabs consisted of only a few dozen Semitic tribes living in a hot and dusty land. To earn their dates by camel’s milk, they traded by camel caravan or carried out raids on their neighbours. But with coming of Islam            (“Submission to God’s Will”), the Arabs set out on conquests which were to change the world. Mohammed merchant in the city of Mecca, was a pensive man who would go off to a cool cave in the mountains to think and ponder. During one such retreat in A.D. 612 he heard a celestial voice commanding him to write and communicate his vision. During the next twenty years, until his death in 632, Mohammed produced the 114 suras ( verses ) which make up the Koran, the beautiful work which became the poetry, law and inspiration of the Moslem world.

   In the early years of Islam, believers were organized into a  small, close-knit society head ed by Mohammed himself. As the community expanded, armies were formed, and military operations begun. Within a century of Mohammed’s death, Arab forces had conquered all the Middle East including Persia, all of North Africa, and even parts of Spain and France.

  Egypt was among the first countries fall, invaded by the Arabs in 639. They made their military camp, EL-Fustat, the country’s capital. Within 300 years Egypt had become one of  the Arab Empire’s most important political, military and religious centres. Then in about 968, a powerful dynasty called the Fatimids swept in from the Maghreb to seize Egypt and establish a new capital, Misr Al-Qahira, the City of Mars. Despite the decadence that was vigorous at first and Cairo enjoyed one of its richest cultural periods during the tow centuries of domination.

  The renowned mosque and university of El-Azhar date from these times and still remain a spiritual beacon to all Islam, the buildings recalling the highest glory  of Fatimid architecture.

  The empire of the Fatimids was overrun by the armies of Saladin in 1169. Saladin, famous for his campaigns against the Crusaders in Palestine and Syria, established his own dynasty in Egypt, the Ayyubids. His descendants were ousted by a new wave of usurpers, mostly Turkish soldiers who had Been slaves(mameluke)of the Ayyubids. In a series of short and violent reigns, Mameluke strong men succeeded on another from 1251 to 1517.  Despite the instability of their rule, Mameluke might spread through Syria and Palestine. In Cairo, they built countless palaces and mosques of exquisite beauty.

   Mameluke power was defeated, but not destroyed, when Egypt was conquered buy the fast-moving and efficient armies of the Ottoman Turks in1517 . Three years later, Suleiman the Magnificetn came to the throne in Constantinople (Istanbul), ushering in the Ottoman Empire’s most brilliant and powerful era. But it didn’t last long and when he died his dominions began a period of decline lasting some three and a half centuries. The Egyptian province lost the benefits of efficient government and internal order as provincial Mameluke lords clamoured for many of their old prerogatives from the Ottoman pasha in Cairo.

   Instability returned with the Mameluke rulers and Egypt lived from crisis in a decadent and backward culture.

Napoleon and Mohammed Ali
   The modern world first came into contact with Egypt when a French military expedition headed by a young officer named Napoleon Bonaparte reached Alexandria in 1798.

   Though their primary interest was to block Britain’s Red Sea route to India, the expedition included a group of scientists and archaeologists. Napoleon’s efforts brought a certain order and discipline to Egypt’s government for a short time, and laid the foundation for later archaeological expeditions. In the momentous Battle of Abukir ( 1798), the British destroyed the French fleet. Three years later the remnants of the French force returned home. Egypt seemed ready to slip into torpor and anarchy again.

   Among the Ottoman troops who had arrived to counter the French invasion was a young officer called Mohammed Ali.

   With considerable cunning and force, he succeeded in seizing power and having himself  appointed Pasha of Egypt by the sultan. Then on May 1, 1811, he invited all his rivals, the Mameluke notables, to a banquet in the Citadel at Cairo. As each Mameluke entered the thick stone  walls, the  gates were slammed shut behind him and the new pasha’s troops quietly removed his head from his body.

   Mameluke Political power, an important factor in Egypt since 1251, ended for good that night.

   Fascinated by glimpses of modern methods he had seen in Napoleon’s army, Mohammed Ali proceeded to reform his own and to build a fleet on Western lines, using European advisors. Moves were made to modernize agriculture and commerce, and cotton was planted in newly irrigated lands. The country started to produce great wealth, and though the people remained desperately poor, remained desperately poor, the ruler was fabulously rich and powerful. Between 1832 and 1841 Mohammed Ali waged war on his sovereign in Istanbul twice and almost succeeded in capturing the Ottoman capital. Forced recognize the virtually independent power of his onetime vassal, the sultan decreed that the office of Pasha of Egypt should be hereditary in the house of Mohammed Ali. Later this title of pasha was up graded to khedive, just short of “king”.

   But later rulers of the House of Mohammed Ali could not live up to their ancestor’s energy and vision. Khedive Ismail, who ruled from 1863 to 1879, championed the plan for a Suez Canal, but his ambitious undertakings were financed by unscrupulous bankers. When the Khedive could not repay the millions in gold which had been lent him at usurious rates of in terest, he was forced by the European powers to accept British and French financial “advisors” in his government.

   The British soon succeeded in gaining political and military control of the country as well.

The 20^th Century
   During the First World war, Egypt’s strategic position was crucial to the British, and Cairo was the staging- point for the Allied offensive which wrested Palestine, Arabia and Syria from Ottoman control. Even before the Ottoman Empire fell, Egypt’s British governors had declared the puppet khedive’s independence from his Turkish Sovereign. Prince Fuad styled himself  King of Egypt when he came to the throne in 1917, but real power was still in the hands of foreigners.

  After the war, nationalist sentiments crystallized in the Wafd Party, led by Saad Zaghloul Pasha. When free elections for a Chamber of Deputies were held in 1924, the anti- British Wafd won a large majority of seats. It continued to be the prime nationalist force for decades  afterwards. The second World War brought renewed military importance to Egypt.  In 1940 an Italian invasion force from Libya pushed deep into Egypt before being turned back by British Empire troops. In the following year General Rommel and an army of trained desert fighters recaptured the ground  and rolled swiftly into Egypt. They were stopped at EL Alamein, only 60 miles from Alexandria, in 1942. But the end of the year the tide of war had turned in favour of the Allies, and Egypt was again securely in British hands.

   King Farouk had came to the Egyptian throne in 1936, a handsome and promising youth trained in a British officers’ school. Despite his good intentions, Farouk soon succumbed to the oriental atmosphere of palace intrigue and luxurious living. Government suffered, and military defeat in Palestine (1948) was followed by diplomatic defeat when the king tried to claim full control over the Sudan and the Suez Canal. Unrest grew, until he was over-thrown in 1952.A group of military officers led by General Mohammed Naguib took over after a short time, Naguib was replaced by the real master mind of the revolution, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.

   The country was declared a republic on 18^th June, 1953, and Nasser remained in power for 17 years. Despite his authoritarian rule, it was during this period that Egypt regained a sense of national identity: under an Egyptian-run government the country rapidly emerged as a leader of the Third World nations and stared to overhaul and modernize the economy. The symbol for this effort became the Aswan High Dam, whose giant power stations generate huge quantities of electricity supplying a third of the country's needs.

   When President Sadat succeeded Nasser in 1970, his more moderate influence provided the counter-balance the country so desperately needed. Egypt's energy and resources had been continually under strain as a result of the recurrent wars with Israel. In 1948,1956,1967 and 1973 hostilities had broken out between the two countries. It was under Sadat that the historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was finally signed in the U.S. in 1979;fiercely opposed by other Arab leaders , it was one reason for Sadat's Assassination in 1981.from ancient pharaohs to modern statesmen, from kings and queens, generals and rulers of every description Egypt's destiny has been formed and handed down from generation to generation through the Egypt's moderate political stance over the last years-in spite of its internal problems- has won it international respect , from which tourism has greatly benefited.