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Arab Republic of Egypt

Gumhriyyat Mir al-Arabiyyah

Anthem: Bilady, Bilady, Bilady.Capital: CairoOfficial language: ArabicEthnic groups: 99% Egyptians, 0.9% Nubians, 0.1% GreeksDemonym: EgyptianGovernment: Semi-presidential republicEstablishment:First Dynasty c.3150 BCIndependence from the United Kingdom 28 February 1922

Republic declared 18 June 1953National Day 23 July (to celebrate 23 July 1952)Currency: Egyptian pound (EGP)

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa,with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Thereby, Egypt is atranscontinental country, and is considered to be a major power in North Africa,Mediterranean Region, African continent, Nile Basin, Islamic World and the Red Sea.Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt isbordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast,the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.

Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. Thegreat majority of its estimated 77.4 million live near the banks of the Nile River, in anarea of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable agriculturalland is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half ofEgypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the denselypopulated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.

Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization and some of the world's most famousmonuments, including the Giza pyramid complex and its Great Sphinx. The southern cityof Luxor contains numerous ancient artifacts, such as the Karnak Temple and the Valleyof the Kings. Egypt is widely regarded as an important political and cultural nation of theMiddle East.

Egypt possesses one of the most developed and diversified economies in the MiddleEast, with sectors such as tourism, agriculture, industry and service at almost equal ratesin national production. Consequently, the Egyptian economy is rapidly developing, due inpart to legislation aimed at luring investments, coupled with both internal and politicalstability, along with recent trade and market liberalization.

Etymology


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The ancient Egyptian name of the country is Kemet (km.t), which means "blackland", referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret(dt), or "red land" of the desert. The name is realized as kmi and km in the Copticstage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as (Khma). Another

name was t3-mry "land of the riverbank". The names of Upper and Lower Egypt wereTa-Sheme'aw (t3-m w) "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew (t3 m w) "northland", respectively.Mir, the Arabic and modern official name of Egypt (Egyptian Arabic: Mar), is of

Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew (Mitzryim), literally meaning "the two straits" (a reference to the dynasticseparation of upper and lower Egypt). The word originally connoted "metropolis" or"civilization" and also means "country", or "frontier-land".

The English name Egypt was borrowed from Middle French Egypte, from LatinAegyptus, from ancient Greek Agyptos (), from earlier Linear B a-ku-pi-ti-yo.The adjective aigpti-, aigptios was borrowed into Coptic as gyptios, kyptios, and fromthere into Arabic as qub, back formed into qub, whence English Copt. The Greek

forms were borrowed from Late Egyptian (Amarna) Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruptionof the earlier Egyptian name Hwt-ka-Ptah (wt-k3-pt), meaning "home of the ka (soul)of Ptah", the name of a temple to the go Ptah at Memphis. Strabo attributed the word to afolk etymology in which Agyptos () evolved as a compound from Aigaiouhuptis (A ), meaning "below the Aegean".

HistoryPre-historic Egypt

There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in the desert oases. In

the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers replaced a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccatethe pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the NileRiver where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.

By about 6000 BC the Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley. During theNeolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and LowerEgypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded asprecursors to Dynastic Egyptian civilization. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site,Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous LowerEgyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than twothousand years, remaining somewhat culturally separate, but maintaining frequent contact

through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptionsappeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200BC.

Ancient EgyptA unified kingdom was founded circa 3150 BC by King Menes, giving rise to a

series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptians subsequentlyreferred to their unified country as tawy , meaning "two lands", and later kemet (Coptic:


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kmi), the "black land", a reference to the fertile black soil deposited by the Nile river.Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptianin its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unifiedEgypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c.27002200 BC., famous for its manypyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty

Giza Pyramids.

The Great Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, built during the Old Kingdom, aremodern national icons that are at the heart of Egypt's thriving tourism industry.

The First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150years. Stronger Nile floods and stabilization of government, however, brought backrenewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BC, reaching a peakduring the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded thearrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. TheHyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC and founded a newcapital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I,

who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.

The New Kingdom (c.15501070 BC) began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, markingthe rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension toan empire as far south as Tombos in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east.This period is noted for some of the most well-known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut,Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The firsthistorically attested expression of monotheism came during this period in the form ofAtenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom.The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, butnative Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.

Persian, Greek and Roman occupation

The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonicepoch. It fell to the Persians in 343 BC after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II,was defeated in battle. Later, Egypt fell to the GrecoMacedonians and Romans,beginning over two thousand years of foreign rule. The last ruler from the Ptolemaic linewas Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide with her lover Marc Antony, after CaesarAugustus had captured them.

Before Egypt became part of the Byzantine realm, Christianity had been brought bySaint Mark the Evangelist in the AD first century. Diocletian's reign marked the transitionfrom the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of EgyptianChristians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated intoEgyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Churchwas firmly established.

Arab and Ottoman occupation


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The Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Persianinvasion early in the seventh century, until in AD 639, Egypt was absorbed into theIslamic Empire by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the Byzantine Armies inEgypt, with the help of some revolutionary Egyptians, the Arabs brought Sunni Islam tothe country. Early in this period, Egyptians began to blend their new faith with

indigenous beliefs and practices that had survived through Coptic Christianity that wasexpanded in Egypt by the Byzantines, giving rise to various Sufi orders that haveflourished to this day. Muslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained incontrol of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Caliphate underthe Fatimids. With the end of the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassianmilitary caste, took control about AD 1250. By late 13th century, Egypt linked the RedSea, India, Malaya, and East Indies. The strategic positioning "assured importance inproductive economy". They continued to govern the country until the conquest of Egyptby the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire.The mid-14th-Century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population. Afterthe 15th century, the threat of military European Crusaders and Central Asian Mongols

set the Egpytian system into decline. The defensive militarization challenged the civilsociety and economic institutions. The weakening of the economic system combined withthe effects of Black Death left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion which can be seenwith the Portuguese taking over their trade. The famine that afflicted Egypt in 1784 costit roughly one-sixth of its population.

Modern history

The brief French invasion of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte began in 1798. Theexpulsion of the French in 1801 by Ottoman, Mamluk, and British forces was followed by four years of anarchy in which Ottomans, Mamluks, and Albanians who werenominally in the service of the Ottomans, wrestled for power. Out of this chaos, thecommander of the Albanian regiment, Muhammad Ali (Kavalali Mehmed Ali Pasha)emerged as a dominant figure and in 1805 was acknowledged by the Sultan in Istanbul ashis viceroy in Egypt; the title implied subordination to the Sultan but this was in fact apolite fiction: Ottoman power in Egypt was finished and Muhammad Ali, an ambitiousand able leader, established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt (at first really and later asBritish puppets) until the revolution of 1952.

His primary focus was military: he annexed Northern Sudan (18201824), Syria(1833), and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest hetopple the Ottoman Empire itself, checked him: he had to return most of his conquests tothe Ottomans, but he kept the Sudan and his title to Egypt was made hereditary. A morelasting consequence of his military ambition is that it made him the moderniser of Egypt.Anxious to learn the military (and therefore industrial) techniques of the great powers hesent students to the West and invited training missions to Egypt. He built industries, asystem of canals for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service.

For better or worse, the introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton, the Egyptianvariety of which became famous, transformed Egyptian agriculture into a cash-cropmonoculture before the end of the century. The social effects of this were enormous: it


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led to the concentration of agriculture in the hands of large landowners, and, with theadditional trigger of high cotton prices caused by the United States' civil war productiondrop, to a large influx of foreigners who began in earnest the exploitation of Egypt forinternational commodity production.

Muhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848),

then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in1863). Abbas I was cautious. Said and Ismail were ambitious developers; unfortunatelythey spent beyond their means. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with the French, wascompleted in 1869. The expense of this and other projects had two effects: it led toenormous debt to European banks, and caused popular discontent because of the oneroustaxation it necessitated. In 1875 Ismail was forced to sell Egypt's share in the canal to theBritish Government. Within three years this led to the imposition of British and Frenchcontrollers who sat in the Egyptian cabinet, and, "with the financial power of thebondholders behind them, were the real power in the Government."

Local dissatisfaction with Ismail and with European intrusion led to the formationof the first nationalist groupings in 1879, with Ahmad Urabi a prominent figure. In 1882

he became head of a nationalist-dominated ministry committed to democratic reformsincluding parliamentary control of the budget. Fearing a diminishment of their control,Britain and France intervened militarily, bombarding Alexandria and crushing theEgyptian army at the battle of Tel el-Kebir. They reinstalled Ismail's son Tewfik asfigurehead of a de facto British protectorate.

In 1914 the Protectorate was made official, and the title of the head of state, whichhad changed from pasha to khedive in 1867, was changed to sultan, to repudiate thevestigial suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, who was backing the Central powers in WorldWar I. Abbas II was deposed as khedive and replaced by his uncle, Hussein Kamel, assultan.

In 1906, the Dinshaway Incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join thenationalist movement. After the First World War, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party ledthe Egyptian nationalist movement, gaining a majority at the local Legislative Assembly.When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on 8 March 1919, the countryarose in its first modern revolution. Constant revolting by the Egyptian people throughoutthe country led Great Britain to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on22 February 1922.

The new Egyptian Government drafted and implemented a new constitution in 1923based on a parliamentary representative system. Saad Zaghlul was popularly elected asPrime Minister of Egypt in 1924. In 1936 the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded.Continued instability in the Government due to remaining British control and increasingpolitical involvement by the king led to the ousting of the monarchy and the dissolutionof the parliament in a military coup d'tat known as the 1952 Revolution. The officers,known as the Free Officers Movement, forced King Farouk to abdicate in support of hisson Fuad.

On 18 June 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General MuhammadNaguib as the first President of the Republic. Naguib was forced to resign in 1954 byGamal Abdel Nasser the real architect of the 1952 movement and was later put underhouse arrest. Nasser assumed power as President in June 1956. British forces completedtheir withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on 13 June 1956. His


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nationalization of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956 prompted the 1956 Suez Crisis.Three years after the 1967 Six Day War, during which Israel had invaded and

occupied Sinai, Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. Sadat switched Egypt'sCold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling Sovietadvisors in 1972. He launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while violently

clamping down on religious and secular opposition alike.In 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched the October War, a surprise attackagainst the Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. It was anattempt to liberate part of the Sinai territory Israel had captured 6 years earlier. Sadathoped to seize some territory via military force, and then regain the rest of the peninsula by diplomacy. The conflict sparked an international crisis between the two worldsuperpowers: the US and the USSR, both of whom intervened. Two UN-mandatedceasefires were needed to bring military operations to a halt. While the war ended in amilitary stalemate, it presented Sadat with a political victory that later allowed him toregain the Sinai in return for peace with Israel.

Sadat made a historic visit to Israel in 1977, which led to the 1979 peace treaty in

exchange for the complete Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Sadat's initiative sparkedenormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the ArabLeague, but it was supported by the vast majority of Egyptians. A fundamentalist militarysoldier assassinated Sadat in Cairo in 1981. He was succeeded by the incumbent HosniMubarak. In 2003, the Egyptian Movement for Change, popularly known as Kefaya, waslaunched to seek a return to democracy and greater civil liberties.

arab republic of egypt 2

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