How Can We Help?
You are here:
< Back

The Egypt Portal

Egypt (Arabic: مصر Miṣr [mesˁr], Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mɑsˤr]), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and the Sinai Peninsula in the southwest corner of Asia. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast. At approximately 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the 14th-most populated country in the world, and the third-most populated in Africa.

Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, later adopting Islam from the seventh century onwards. Cairo became the capital of the Fatimid Caliphate in the tenth century, and of the Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century. Egypt then became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, before its local ruler Muhammad Ali established modern Egypt as an autonomous Khedivate in 1867.

Egypt's current government, a semi-presidential republic led by president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi since he was elected in 2014, has been described by a number of watchdogs as authoritarian and responsible for perpetuating the country's poor human rights record. Islam is the official religion of Egypt, and Arabic is its official language. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypt's territory, are sparsely inhabited. About 43% of Egypt's residents live across the country's urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta. Egypt is considered to be a regional power in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world, and a middle power worldwide. It is a developing country having a diversified economy, which is the largest in Africa, the 38th-largest economy by nominal GDP and 127th by nominal GDP per capita. Egypt is a founding member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the African Union, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, World Youth Forum, and a member of BRICS. (Full article...)

Selected article - show another

Egypt competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, from 27 July to 12 August 2012, sending one of its largest delegations ever. A total of 110 Egyptian athletes participated in 83 events across 20 sports, with more women taking part than ever before. The nation's flagbearer in the opening ceremonies was Hesham Mesbah, a judoka who was Egypt's only medalist at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Egypt won two medals during the course of the Games: Alaaeldin Abouelkassem earned silver in the men's foil, becoming the first competitor from an African nation to win a fencing medal, while Karam Gaber captured silver in the men's 84 kg Greco-Roman wrestling event. Two Egyptian weightlifters were awarded medals retroactively, after higher-ranked competitors were disqualified for doping: Abeer Abdelrahman took silver in the women's 75 kg event, while Tarek Yehia, received bronze in the men's 85 kg event. Among other achievements, Mostafa Mansour was the nation's first competitor in sprint canoeing while fencer Shaimaa El-Gammal became the first Egyptian female to appear in four editions of the Olympics.

Prior to 2012, Egypt had sent athletes to nineteen editions of the Summer Olympic Games, the 1906 Intercalated Games, equestrian at the 1956 Summer Olympics, and the 1984 Winter Olympics. Before the Games began, the Egyptian Olympic Committee distributed counterfeit Nike gear to its athletes, due to its financial troubles following the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Nike, however, ended up donating legitimate equipment to the Egyptians. Tamer Bayoumi, a 2004 Olympic bronze medalist and the nation's most successful taekwondo practitioner at the 2012 Games, was chosen to carry Egypt's flag at the closing ceremony. (Full article...)
List of selected articles

General images

The following are images from various Egypt-related articles on Wikipedia.

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

Selected biography - show another

Ahmed Subhy Mansour (Arabic: أحمد صبحي منصور; born March 1, 1949) is an Egyptian American activist and Quranist scholar dealing with Islamic history, culture, theology, and politics. He founded a small Egyptian Quranist group that is neither Sunni nor Shia. In 1987, he was fired from Al-Azhar University after expressing his Quranist views. One of his fellow Islamic scholars at Al-Azhar University, Sheikh Jamal Tahir, took up the same Quran alone stance. Mansour was exiled from Egypt, and lives in the United States as a political refugee. In the United States, he established the Ahl-Alquran website. (Full article...)

Selected cuisines, dishes and foods - show another

Feteer meshaltet in Egypt
Feteer meshaltet (Egyptian Arabic: فطير مشلتت [fɪˈtˤiːr meˈʃæltet], literally "cushioned pies" or "cushion-like pies"), often simply referred to as meshaltet (مشلتت), is a flaky Egyptian layered pastry. It consists of many thin layers of dough and ghee and an optional filling. The fillings can be both sweet or savory. Sweet fillings may include cheese, coconut, mehalabiya, malban, Nutella or chocolate, while savory fillings can be anything from ground beef to sausage or cheese. Plain meshaltet is usually soaked in honey and spread with jam or cheese or served with olives. Because of its versatility, meshaltet is often referred to as an Egyptian pizza. (Full article...)

WikiProjects

More did you know...

Egypt topics

Categories

New articles

This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.

Rules | Match log | Results page (for watching) | Last updated: 2024-07-19 20:28 (UTC)

Note: The list display can now be customized by each user. See List display personalization for details.
















Things you can do

Here are some open tasks you can do:

  1. Expand a stub in the Category:Egypt stubs.
  2. Improve articles that need attention.
  3. Tag articles dealing with Egypt with the appropriate banner, {{WikiProject Egypt}} and/or, {{WikiProject Ancient Egypt}}.
  4. Assess articles as indicated on the Assessment page.
  5. Add every page within the scope of the project to Articles, by category.
  6. Check on recent changes to note improvements, other changes, or vandalism.
  7. Created the requested pages on Wikipedia:WikiProject Egypt/Article requests
  8. Look up for Egypt-related deletion sorting here.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

  • Commons
    Free media repository
  • Wikibooks
    Free textbooks and manuals
  • Wikidata
    Free knowledge base
  • Wikinews
    Free-content news
  • Wikiquote
    Collection of quotations
  • Wikisource
    Free-content library
  • Wikispecies
    Directory of species
  • Wikiversity
    Free learning tools
  • Wikivoyage
    Free travel guide
  • Wiktionary
    Dictionary and thesaurus

External media

More portals

Categories
Table of Contents