Al-Azhar Islamic university in Cairo Egypt, connected to a mosque built around 971, is considered by many Sunni Muslims as the world's highest Sunni Muslim authority.

The republic of Egypt has recognized Islam as the state religion since 1980.^[1] Egypt is predominantly Muslim, with around 80 million Muslims, comprising 94.7% of the population, as of 2010.^[2][3] Almost the entirety of Egypt's Muslims are Sunnis.^[4]

Prior to Napoleon's invasion, almost all of Egypt's educational, legal, public health, and social welfare issues were in the hands of religious functionaries. Ottoman rule reinforced the public and political roles of the ulama (religious scholars), as Mamluk rule had done before the Ottomans, because Islam was the state religion and because political divisions in the country were based on religious divisions.^[5] During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, successive governments made extensive efforts to limit the role of the ulama in public life and to bring religious institutions under closer state control. The secular transformation of public life in Egypt depended on the development of a civil bureaucracy that would absorb many of the ulama's responsibilities in the country.

After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the government assumed responsibility for appointing officials to mosques and religious schools. The government mandated reform of Al-Azhar University beginning in 1961. These reforms permitted department heads to be drawn from outside the ranks of the traditionally trained orthodox ulama.

Islam in Egyptian society[link]

As of 1917^[update], Egyptian Islam was a complex and diverse religion. Although Muslims agreed on the faith's basic tenets, the country's various social groups and classes applied Islam differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al-Azhar University generally rejected the version of Islam practiced by illiterate religious preachers and peasants in the countryside. Most upper- and upper-middle-class Muslims believed either that religious expression was a private matter for each individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal cut across class lines, were present in most cities and in many villages.^[6]

Today devout Muslims believe that Islam defines one's relationship to God, to other Muslims, and to non-Muslims. They also believe that there can be no dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. Many Muslims say that Egypt's governments have been secularist and even anti-religious since the early 1920s.^[6] Politically organized Muslims who seek to purge the country of its secular policies are referred to as "Islamists."

Orthodox ulama or "the relgious establishment" found themselves in a difficult position during the wave of Islamic activism that swept through Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s. Most Ulama, including those of Al-Azhar University, are employees of the Egyptian state who "recognize the regime’s primacy, support its stability, and legitimize its policies".^[7] Radical Islamists viewed them as puppets of the status quo. To maintain their influence in the country, the ulama espoused more conservative stances. After 1974, for example, many al-Azhar ulama, who had acquiesced to family planning initiatives in the 1960s, openly criticized government efforts at population control. The ulama also supported moves to reform the country's legal code to conform to Islamic teaching. They remained, nonetheless, comparatively moderate; they were largely loyal to the government and condemned the violence of radical Islamist groups. Outside of the state-mosques are more than 40,000 independent mosques throughout Egypt.^[8]

Egypt's largely uneducated urban and rural lower classes were intensely devoted to Islam, but they usually lack a thorough knowledge of the religion. Even village religious leaders usually have only a rudimentary knowledge of Islam. The typical village imam or prayer leader had at most a few years of schooling; his scholarly work was limited to reading prayers and sermons prepared by others and to learning passages from the Qur'an. Popular religion included a variety of unorthodox practices, such as veneration of saints, recourse to charms and amulets, and belief in the influence of evil spirits.^[6]

Masjid 'Hamza in Suez, Egypt

Popular Islam is based mostly on oral tradition. Imams with virtually no formal education commonly memorize the entire Qur'an and recite appropriate verses on religious occasions. They also tell religious stories at village festivals and commemorations marking an individual's rites of passage. Predestination plays an important role in popular Islam.^[6] This concept includes the belief that everything that happens in life is the will of God and the belief that trying to avoid misfortune is useless and invites worse affliction. Revelations from God in the Qur'an form the basis of Monotheism merged with a belief in angels, and jinns (spirits).

Popular Islam ranges from informal prayer sessions or Qur'an study to organized cults or orders. Because of the pervasive sexual segregation of Egypt's Islamic society, men and women often practice their religion in different ways. A specifically female religious custom is the zar, a ceremony for helping women placate spirits who are believed to have possessed them. Women specially trained by their mothers or other women in zar lore organize the ceremonies. A zar organizer holds weekly meetings and employs music and dance to induce ecstatic trances in possessed women. Wealthy women sometimes pay to have private zars conducted in their homes; these zars are more elaborate than public ones, last for several days, and sometimes involve efforts to exorcise spirits.^[6]

Egypt is a young country with more than 45 million citizens 35 years old or younger. The Influence of digital/youth culture is found in preachers such as the very popular Amr Khaled who "maintains a disciplined focus on the lives, issues and problems of the upper middle classes"; espouses `living a comfortable life`; talks to youth about `getting closer to God` without changing one's lifestyle; promotes hijab while "joking about dating and flirting". ^[9] The young `sheikhs` deliver their sermons over the Internet, on private satellite channels and in sports clubs, away from the control of Al-Azhar and the state.^[9]

Sufism[link]

A primarily male spiritual manifestation is Sufism, an Islamic mystical tradition. Sufism exists in a number of forms, most of which represent an original tarika developed by an inspired founder, or shaykh. These shaykhs gradually gathered about themselves murids, or disciples, whom they initiated into the tarika. Gradually the murids formed orders, also known as turuq, which were loyal to the shaykh or his successors. The devotions of many Sufi orders center on various forms of the dhikr, a ceremony at which music, body movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the disciples. Since the early 1970s, there has been a revival of interest in Sufism. Egypt's contemporary Sufis tend to be young, college-educated men in professional careers.^[6]

According to one journalist, at least a third of the adult male Muslim population in Egypt, (six million men) are members of a Sufi order. Participation at the festivals (moulids) the Sufi orders organize, is perhaps twice that (and includes women and children).^[10] The moulids are a major manifestation of Sufi Islam in Egypt, and are held in honor of holy men and women. (In Egypt the term Moulid is not reserved for Muslim festivals and may be in honor of Christian, and until recently Jewish holy men). Sufi Muslim moulids not only venerate the prophet Muhammad and his descendants (such as Hussein, the second son of the fourth Caliph Ali whose moulid in Cairo can draws crowds of more than a million people), but founders of Sufi orders, down to dozens of lesser-known sheikhs celebrated mostly in remote rural communities. The largest moulid in Egypt takes place in Tanta, the largest city in the Nile Delta, and draws an even larger number of pilgrims than hajj in Mecca. As many as three million Egyptians and other Arabs gather there every October to celebrate the life of Sayid Ahmad al-Badawi, a thirteenth-century Sufi leader.^[10] According to the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Islamic charity), there are officially more than forty such annual commemorations, and the Sufi Council in Egypt lists eighty other festivals for lesser-known founders of Sufi orders. ^[10]

Salafi[link]

Sufi Islam is a sore point with the ulama and more importantly with Islamists, such as Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Muslims. Islamists and Salafi believe Sufi tombs are unIslamic^[11] and have sometimes sabotaged or vandalized tombs and moulids. ^[12][13] One source estimates 5-6 million in Egypt are Salafis,^[14] another source describes Salafis before the 2011 revolution as the "most important or pervasive Islamic force in the country" with an influence "many times more than that of organized political Islam." With "no history of violence, no organizational structure, no manifestos and no obvious political ambitions", they were tolerated by the Mubarak regime and ignored by the news media.^[15]

Islamic political movements[link]

Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt.

Islamic political activism has a lengthy history in Egypt. Several Islamic political groups started soon after World War I ended. The most well-known Islamic political organization is the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimun, also known as the Brotherhood), founded in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. After World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood acquired a reputation as a radical group prepared to use violence to achieve its religious goals. The group was implicated in several assassinations, including the murder of one prime minister. The Brotherhood had contacts with the Free Officers before the 1952 Revolution and supported most of their initial policies. The Brotherhood, however, soon came into conflict with Gamal Abdel Nasser.^[16] The government accused the Brotherhood of complicity in an alleged 1954 plot to assassinate the president and imprisoned many of the group's leaders. In the 1970s, Anwar Sadat amnestied the leaders and permitted them to resume some of their activities. But by that time, the Brotherhood was divided into at least three factions. The more militant faction was committed to a policy of political opposition to the government. A second faction advocated peaceful withdrawal from society and the creation, to the extent possible, of a separate, parallel society based upon Islamic values and law. The dominant moderate group advocated cooperation with the regime.^[17]

The Muslim Brotherhood's reemergence as a political force coincided with the proliferation of Islamic groups. Some of these groups espoused the violent overthrow of the government while others espoused living a devout life of rigorous observance of religious practices. It is impossible to list all the Islamic groups that emerged in the late 1970s because many of them had diffuse structures and some of the more militant groups were underground. Egypt's defeat and loss of territory in the June 1967 Six-Day War was the main cause for the growth of religiously inspired political activism.^[18] Muslims tended to view the humiliating experience as the culmination of 150 years of foreign intrusion and an affront to their vision of a true Islamic community. Islamic tradition rejected the idea of non-Muslims dominating Muslim society. Such a state of affairs discredited Muslim rulers who permitted it to persist. It was, therefore, incumbent on believers to end the domination and restore the true supremacy of Islam. As part of their Sunni creed, the most radical activists adopted jihad and committed themselves to battling unbelievers and impious Muslims. During the 1970s and 1980s, Islamists perpetrated a number of violent acts, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981.^[17]

Disruptive social changes and Sadat's relative tolerance toward political parties contributed to the rapid growth of Islamic groups in the 1970s. On university campuses, for example, Sadat initially viewed the rise of Islamic associations (Gama'at Islamiya) as a counterbalance to leftist influence among students. The Gama'at Islamiya spread quite rapidly on campuses and won up to one-third of all student union elections. These victories provided a platform from which the associations campaigned for Islamic dress, the veiling of women, and the segregation of classes by gender. Secular university administrators opposed these goals. In 1979 Sadat sought to diminish the influence of the associations through a law that transferred most of the authority of the student unions to professors and administrators. During the 1980s, however, Islamists gradually penetrated college faculties. At Asyut University, which was the scene of some of the most intense clashes between Islamists and their opponents (including security forces, secularists, and Copts), the president and other top administrators—who were Islamists—supported Gama'at Islamiya demands to end mixed-sex classes and to reduce total female enrollment.^[17] Public opinion in Egypt supported political Islam to some extent, one poll in the mid-1980s found 96% of Egyptian Muslims favoring the application of the Sharia.^[19]

As of 1989^[update], the Islamists sought to make Egypt a community of the faithful based on their vision of an Islamic social order. They rejected conventional, secularist social analyses of Egypt's socioeconomic problems. They maintained, for example, that the causes of poverty were not overpopulation or high defense expenditures but the populace's spiritual failures—laxness, secularism, and corruption. The solution was a return to the simplicity, hard work, and self-reliance of earlier Muslim life. The Islamists created their own alternative network of social and economic institutions through which members could work, study, and receive medical treatment in an Islamic environment.^[17]

Islamists rejected Marxism and Western capitalism. Indeed, they viewed atheistic communism, Jewish Zionism, and Western "Crusader-minded" Christianity as their main enemies, which were responsible for the decadence that led to foreign domination and defeat by Zionists. They were intolerant of people who did not share their worldview. Islamists tended to be hostile toward the orthodox ulama, especially the scholars at Al Azhar who frequently criticized the Islamists' extreme religious interpretations. Islamists believed that the established social and political order had tainted the ulama, who had come to represent stumbling blocks to the new Islamic order. In addition, Islamists condemned the orthodox as "pulpit parrots" committed to a formalist practice of Islam but not to its spirit.^[17]

The social origins of Islamists changed after the 1952 Revolution. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood had appealed primarily to urban civil servants and white and blue-collar workers. After the early 1970s, the Islamic revival attracted followers from a broad spectrum of social classes. Most activists were university students or recent graduates; they included rural-urban migrants and urban middle-class youth whose fathers were middle-level government employees or professionals. Their fields of study—medicine, engineering, military science, and pharmacy—were among the most highly competitive and prestigious disciplines in the university system. The rank-and- file members of Islamist groups have come from the middle class, the lower-middle class, and the urban working class.^[17]

Various Islamist groups espoused different means for achieving their political agenda. All Islamists, however, were concerned with Islam's role in the complex and changing society of Egypt in the late twentieth century. A common focus of their political efforts has been to incorporate the Shari'a into the country's legal code. In deference to their increasing influence, the Ministry of Justice in 1977 published a draft law making apostasy by a Muslim a capital offense and proposing traditional Islamic punishments for crimes, such as stoning for adultery and amputation of a hand for theft. In 1980 Egypt supported a referendum that proposed a constitutional amendment to make the Shari'a "the sole source of law." The influence of the Islamists temporarily waned in the aftermath of Sadat's assassination in 1981, but the election of nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood to the People's Assembly in 1984 revived Islamists' prospects. In 1985 the People's Assembly voted to initiate a procedure for the gradual application of the Shari'a, beginning with an indefinite education period to prepare the population for the legal changes; the next step would be to amend all existing laws to exclude any provisions that conflict with the Shari'a. Moves to reform the legal code received support from many Muslims who wanted to purify society and reject Western legal codes forced on Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.^[17] As of 2009, the Grand Mufti also has another title, Dar al-Iftaa, a part of the Ministry of Justice. While his rulings are nonbinding, they are "influential." His office issues 5,000 fatwas a week.^[20]

By the beginning of the 21st century, only the Gama'at Islamiya leaders who were in prison after the assassination of Sadat were released after several books they wrote and interviews showed that they revised their points of view and changed the radical tone of their speeches.^[17]

Status of religious freedom[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Historical and ancient mosques in Cairo.

The Constitution provides for freedom of belief and the practice of religion; however, the Government places restrictions on this right. According to the Constitution, Islam is the official state religion, and Shari'a is the primary source of legislation; religious practices that conflict with the official interpretation of Shari'a are prohibited. However, since the Government does not consider the practice of Christianity or Judaism to conflict with Shari'a, for the most part members of the non-Muslim minority worship without legal harassment and may maintain links with coreligionists in other countries. Members of other religions that are not recognized by the Government, such as the Bahá'í Faith, may experience personal and collective hardship.

An 1856 Ottoman decree still in force requires non-Muslims to obtain a presidential decree to build a place of worship. In addition Interior Ministry regulations issued in 1934 specify a set of 10 conditions that the Government must consider prior to issuance of a presidential decree permitting construction of a church. These conditions include the location of the proposed site, the religious composition of the surrounding community, and the proximity of other churches. The Ottoman decree also requires the President to approve permits for the repair of church facilities.

In December 1999, in response to strong criticism of the Ottoman decree, President Mubarak issued a decree making the repair of all places of worship subject to a 1976 civil construction code. The decree is significant symbolically because it places churches closer to an equal footing with mosques before the law. The practical impact of the decree has been to facilitate significantly church repairs; however, Christians report that local permits still are subject to security authorities' approval. The approval process for church construction continued to be time consuming and insufficiently responsive to the wishes of the Christian community. As a result of these restrictions, some communities use private buildings and apartments for religious services.

According to a 1995 law, the application of family law, including marriage, divorce, alimony, child custody, inheritance, and burial, is based on an individual's religion. In the practice of family law, the State recognizes only the three "heavenly religions:" Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Muslim families are subject to the Personal Status Law, which draws on Shari'a (Islamic law). Christian families are subject to canon law, and Jewish families are subject to Jewish law. In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law.

Under Islamic law, non-Muslim males must convert to Islam to marry Muslim women. Christian and Jewish women need not convert to marry Muslim men . Muslim women are prohibited from marrying Christian men. Muslim female heirs receive half the amount of a male heir's inheritance, while Christian widows of Muslims have no inheritance rights. A sole female heir receives half her parents' estate; the balance goes to designated male relatives. A sole male heir inherits all his parents' property. Male Muslim heirs face strong social pressure to provide for all family members who require assistance; however, this assistance is not always provided. In January 2000, the Parliament passed a new Personal Status Law that made it easier for a Muslim woman to obtain a divorce without her husband's consent, provided that she is willing to forgo alimony and the return of her dowry. However, an earlier provision of the draft law that would have made it easier for a woman to travel without her husband's consent, was rejected.

See also[link]

• Islam by country
• Religion in Egypt
• Christianity in Egypt

References[link]

External links[link]

• Booknotes interview with Caryle Murphy on Passion for Islam: Shaping the Modern Middle East—The Egyptian Experience, November 3, 2002.

•  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.
• US State Department [1]

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Arab Republic of Egypt جمهورية مصر العربية Ǧumhūriyyat Maṣr al-ʿArabiyyah
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem:  "Bilady, Bilady, Bilady" "My country, my country, my country"
Capital (and largest city)		Cairo 30°2′N 31°13′E / 30.033°N 31.217°E / 30.033; 31.217
Official language(s)		Arabic[a]
Recognised national languages		Coptic
Demonym		Egyptian
Government		Military junta
-	Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces	Mohamed Hussein Tantawi[b]
-	Prime Minister	Kamal Ganzouri
Legislature		Parliament[d]
-	Upper house	Shura Council
-	Lower house	People's Assembly
Establishment
-	Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt	c. 3150 BC
-	Independence from the United Kingdom	28 February 1922
-	Declaration of the republic	18 June 1953
-	The Egyptian revolution [1]	25 January 2011
-	Current Constitution[2]	30 March 2011
Area
-	Total	1,002,450 km2 (30th) 387,048 sq mi
-	Water (%)	0.632
Population
-	2011 estimate	90 million (82 million inside + 8 million abroad) [3] [4] (16th)
-	2006 census	76,699,427 (total)[5] incl. 3,901,396 abroad
-	Density	Real density:[c] 2,755.2/km2 (38th) 7,136/sq mi Arithmetic density: 76.3/km2 (126th) 197.5/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$518.976 billion[6]
-	Per capita	$6,540[6]
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$235.719 billion[6]
-	Per capita	$2,970[6]
Gini (1999–00)		34.5 (medium)
HDI (2011)		0.644[7] (medium) (113th)
Currency		Egyptian pound (EGP)
Time zone		EET (UTC+2 (No DST Since 2011))
Drives on the		right
ISO 3166 code		EG
Internet TLD		.eg, مصر.
Calling code		+20
a.^ Literary Arabic is the sole official language.[2] Egyptian Arabic is the national spoken language. Other dialects and minority languages are used regionally. b.^ De facto interim head of state.[8][9] c.^ Densities are based on 2006 population figures. The gap between arithmetic and real densities is due to the fact that 98% of Egyptians live on 3% of the territory.[10] d.^ Parliament dissolved as of 11 February 2011.

Egypt ⁱ/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (Arabic: مصر, Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: [mɑsˤɾ] ; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, Kīmi ; Sahidic Coptic: ⲕⲏⲙⲉ, Kēme), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic:  جمهوريّة مصر العربيّة (help·info), is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt is bordered 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. The great majority of its over 81 million people^[4] live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.

Monuments in Egypt such as the Giza pyramid complex and its Great Sphinx were constructed by its ancient civilization. Its ancient ruins, such as those of Memphis, Thebes, and Karnak and the Valley of the Kings outside Luxor, are a significant focus of archaeological study. The tourism industry and the Red Sea Riviera employ about 12% of Egypt's workforce.

The economy of Egypt is one of the most diversified in the Middle East, with sectors such as tourism, agriculture, industry and service at almost equal production levels.

In early 2011, Egypt underwent a revolution, which resulted in the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak after nearly 30 years in power.^[11]

Presidential elections are scheduled for May 2012.

Names[link]

The English name Egypt was borrowed from Middle French Egypte, from Latin Aegyptus, from ancient Greek Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος), from earlier Linear B 𐁁𐀓𐀠𐀴𐀍 a-ku-pi-ti-yo. The adjective aigýpti-, aigýptios was borrowed into Coptic as ⲅⲩⲡϯⲓⲟⲥ/ⲕⲩⲡϯⲓⲟⲥ gyptios, kyptios, and from there into Arabic as قبطي qubṭī, back formed into قبة qubṭ, whence English Copt. The Greek forms were borrowed from Late Egyptian (Amarna) Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruption of the earlier Egyptian name Hwt-ka-Ptah (ḥwt-kꜣ-ptḥ), meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to the god Ptah at Memphis.^[12] Strabo attributed the word to a folk etymology in which Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος) evolved as a compound from Aigaiou huptiōs (Aἰγαίου ὑπτίως), meaning "below the Aegean".

Miṣr, the Arabic and modern official name of Egypt (Egyptian Arabic: Maṣr), is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם‎ (Mitzráyim), literally meaning "the two straits" (a reference to the dynastic separation of upper and lower Egypt).^{[unreliable source?][13]} The word originally connoted "metropolis" or "civilization" and means "country", or "frontier-land".

The ancient Egyptian name of the country is Kemet (km.t) [𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖], which means "black land", referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret (dšṛt), or "red land" of the desert.^[14] The name is realized as kēme and kēmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía).^[15] Another name was tꜣ-mry "land of the riverbank".^[16] The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Sheme'aw (tꜣ-šmꜥw) "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew (tꜣ mḥw) "northland", respectively.

History[link]

Pre-historic Egypt[link]

There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers replaced a grain-grinding culture.^{[citation needed]} Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.^[17]

By about 6000 BC a Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley.^[18] During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BC.^[19]

Ancient Egypt[link]

Giza Pyramids

A unified kingdom was founded c. 3150 BC by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c. 2700–2200 BC., which constructed many pyramids, 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, are modern 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 150 years.^[20] Stronger Nile floods and stabilization of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BC, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC and founded a new capital 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. 1550–1070 BC began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an 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 first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.^[21]

The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Persians in 343 BC after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle.

Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt[link]

The Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera.

The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.^[22][23]

The last ruler from the Ptolemaic line was Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide with her lover Mark Antony, after Caesar Augustus had captured them. The Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians often caused by an unwanted regime and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome. Nevertheless Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest.

Christianity was brought to Egypt by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the 1st century.^[24] Diocletian's reign marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.^[25]

Arab and Ottoman Egypt[link]

Selim I (1470–1520), conquered Egypt

The Hanging Church of Cairo, first built in the 3rd or 4th century, is one of the most famous Coptic Churches in Egypt.

The Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Persian invasion early in the 7th century, until 639-42, when Egypt was invaded and conquered by the Islamic Empire by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the Byzantine Armies in Egypt, the Arabs brought Sunni Islam to the country. Early in this period, Egyptians began to blend their new faith with indigenous beliefs and practices, leading to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day.^[24] These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.^[26]

Muslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Caliphate under the Fatimids. With the end of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about AD 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies.^[27] They continued to govern the country until the conquest of Egypt by 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.^[28]