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| Long Form of Name: | Arab Republic of Egypt |
| Capital: | Cairo the largest city in the Arab world, Africa, and the Middle East. It is also the industrial and commercial center of Egypt. |
| Other Major Cities: | Alexandria, Egypt's chief port, Port Said, Luxor, Aswan, Zagazig and Assiut . |
| Area: | 1,001,450 sq. km (386,662 sq. mi) |
| Map Location: | between parallels 22 and 32 and meridians 24 and 37 |
| Population: | 65,000,000 (1996 Census). |
| Official Language: | Arabic. |
| The Flag: | A tricolor of red, white and black, with a golden eagle set in the middle. |
| Currency : | Egyptian pound = 100 piasters. 1 Egyptian pound = approximately 29 Japanese yen (2002 average). |
| National Day: | 23 July, Anniversary of the 1952 Revolution |
Location:
Egypt enjoys a unique, strategic location at the crossroads between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Situated in the Northeastern corner of Africa, it is bound by the Mediterranean Sea from the North, the Red Sea, Palestine and Israel from the East, Libya from the West and the Sudan from the South.
Terrain:
The Nile, which traverses over 1,000 miles within Egypt, from Wadi Halfa in the South to the Mediterranean in the north, divides the country into four broad region:
The Nile Valley and the Delta are the most densely-populated parts of Egypt. The inhabited area constitutes 6.0% of the total area of the country. The vast majority of the remaining land is made up of sparsely inhabited, arid desert. Although average population density in Egypt is around 60 inhabitants/sq. km, actual population density in inhabited areas averages 1000 inhabitants/sq. km.
Extensive land reclamation efforts since 1947 have aimed at increasing the area of cultivable land. One of the fundamental goals of Egypt's policy is to redistribute the population and to make full use of the so far unexploited areas and natural resources available. Great attention is presently directed to the new cities with special emphasis given to the master development plans for Sinai and the "New Valley" in southern Egypt; two areas with huge economic and strategic potential.
Egypt has mainly two seasons:
a mild winter from November to April and a hot summer from May to October.
In the coastal regions, temperatures range between an average minimum of
14 C in winter and an average maximum of 30 C in summer. Temperatures
vary widely in the inland desert areas, especially in summer, when they
may range from 7 C at night to 43 C during the day. During winter,
temperatures in the desert fluctuate less dramatically, but they can be
as low as 0 C at night and as high as 23 C during the day. The average
annual temperature increases moving southward from the Delta to the Sudanese
border, where temperatures are similar to those of the open deserts to
the east and west. At Aswan, in the south, June temperatures can be as
low as 10 C at night and as high as 41 C during the day when the sky
is clear.
AVERAGE TEMPERATURES IN CAIRO
| WINTER | SPRING | SUMMER | FALL | |||||||||
| DEC | JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | |
| HIGH | 20 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 28 | 33 | 35 | 36 | 35 | 32 | 30 | 26 |
| LOW | 10 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 14 | 17 | 20 | 20 | 22 | 20 | 18 | 14 |
Egypt receives fewer than eighty millimeters of precipitation annually in most areas. Most rain falls along the coast, but even the wettest area, around Alexandria, receives only about 200 millimeters of precipitation per year. Cairo receives a little more than one centimeter of precipitation each year. The city, however, reports humidity as high as 77 percent during the summer. But during the rest of the year, humidity is low. The areas south of Cairo receive only traces of rainfall.
A phenomenon of Egypt's climate is the hot spring wind carrying sand that blows across the country. The winds, known to Europeans as the sirocco and to Egyptians as the khamsin, usually arrive in April but occasionally occur in March and May.
