The history of Egypt

Egypt's history is shaped by the Nile, which turns a strip of desert into one of the most fertile valleys on earth. Around 3100 BCE the farming communities along the river were united into the world's first large territorial state, and for almost three thousand years pharaohs ruled a civilisation of pyramids, temples, hieroglyphic writing and elaborate beliefs about the afterlife. From the sixth century BCE Egypt was ruled by a long series of outsiders: Persians, Macedonian Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, then, after the Arab conquest of the 640s, Muslim dynasties that made Cairo one of the great cities of the Islamic world. Ottoman rule from 1517 gave way to the modernising dynasty of Muhammad Ali, British occupation from 1882 and, after the revolution of 1952, a republic dominated by military-backed presidents, from Gamal Abdel Nasser to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. With more than 100 million people, it is the most populous country in the Arab world.

People have lived along the Nile and in the then-greener Sahara for hundreds of thousands of years, and the Western Desert preserves stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic onward. As the climate became wetter after the last Ice Age, hunters and cattle herders roamed what is now desert; at Nabta Playa, near the Sudanese border, they built a circle of standing stones and buried cattle around 7,000 years ago. When the Sahara dried out again, from about 5000 BCE, people increasingly crowded into the Nile valley and delta.

Prehistoric Egypt took part in the Neolithic Revolution through crops and animals that came from south-west Asia: wheat, barley, sheep and goats. Farming villages appeared at Merimde and in the Fayum in the north by the sixth millennium BCE, and the Badarian culture of Middle Egypt followed. The Naqada culture of Upper Egypt, from about 4000 BCE, developed fine painted pottery, copper tools, long-distance trade and increasingly rich graves for an emerging elite. By the late fourth millennium regional rulers at places such as Hierakonpolis, Naqada and Abydos were competing for power, and the first hieroglyphic signs appear on labels from a royal tomb at Abydos around 3200 BCE.

Around 3100 BCE the valley and the delta were joined under one king. Egyptian tradition credited a founder called Menes; the Narmer Palette shows a king Narmer wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt, and many scholars identify the two. The kings of Early Dynastic Egypt, the First and Second Dynasties, ruled from Memphis near the apex of the delta, developed writing for administration and built mud-brick tombs at Abydos and Saqqara. The king was presented as a god on earth, responsible for maintaining maat, the cosmic order.

The Old Kingdom, from about 2686 to 2181 BCE, was the age of the pyramids. The architect Imhotep built the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara for the Third Dynasty, the first monumental stone building in the world. Under the Fourth Dynasty, Sneferu built true pyramids at Dahshur, and his son Khufu raised the Great Pyramid at Giza around 2560 BCE, followed by the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure and the Great Sphinx. These projects required a highly organised state that taxed the harvest, kept records and fed large workforces of labourers, who were not, as was once believed, slaves. Later dynasties built smaller pyramids, and from the end of the Fifth Dynasty their burial chambers carried the Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious writings in Egypt. The civilisation of ancient Egypt also traded with Byblos for cedar, sent expeditions south into Nubia and, by sea, to the land of Punt.

From about 2181 BCE central authority collapsed. Low Nile floods, the growing wealth of provincial governors and the extremely long reign of Pepi II all contributed. In this First Intermediate Period rival dynasties at Herakleopolis in the north and Thebes in the south fought for control, until the Theban king Mentuhotep II reunited the country around 2055 BCE.

The Middle Kingdom of Egypt that followed, especially under the Twelfth Dynasty founded by Amenemhat I, is regarded by Egyptians themselves as a classical age of literature, with works such as the Story of Sinuhe and instructions for wise living. Its kings reclaimed land in the Fayum, built a chain of great fortresses in Lower Nubia to control the gold and trade routes, and strengthened royal control over the provinces. Amenemhat III marked the high point of prosperity.

During the Second Intermediate Period, from about 1650 BCE, rulers of west Asian origin known as the Hyksos, "rulers of foreign lands", took power in the north from their capital at Avaris in the eastern delta, while a native dynasty held Thebes and the Kingdom of Kerma in Nubia pressed from the south. The Hyksos introduced the horse-drawn chariot and the composite bow to Egypt. Theban kings fought back, and around 1550 BCE Ahmose I drove the Hyksos out.

The New Kingdom of Egypt, from about 1550 to 1070 BCE, was the age of empire. Its kings conquered Nubia as far as the Fourth Cataract and campaigned through the Levant to the Euphrates. Thebes, with the temple of Amun at Karnak, became the religious capital, and the kings were buried in rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Hatshepsut, who ruled as pharaoh around 1479 to 1458 BCE, built her terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari and sent a famous expedition to Punt. Her stepson Thutmose III won the battle of Megiddo and led more than a dozen campaigns, bringing Egypt's empire to its greatest extent.

Akhenaten, in the mid-14th century BCE, abandoned the traditional gods in favour of the worship of the sun disc, the Aten, and built a new capital at Amarna, where he lived with his queen Nefertiti. His revolution did not outlast him. His young successor Tutankhamun restored the old cults, and his nearly intact tomb, found by Howard Carter in 1922, made him the best-known pharaoh today. The Nineteenth Dynasty brought renewed wars with the Hittites for control of Syria. Ramesses II fought them at Kadesh in 1274 BCE, an indecisive battle he celebrated as a victory, and later concluded one of the earliest known peace treaties with them. He reigned for 66 years and built on a vast scale, from Abu Simbel in Nubia to his new delta capital, Pi-Ramesses.

The empire weakened amid the Late Bronze Age collapse. Ramesses III repelled invasions by the "Sea Peoples" and Libyans in the early 12th century BCE, but economic troubles, tomb robbing and the first recorded labour strike, by the tomb-builders of Deir el-Medina, show the strain on the state.

During the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, from about 1070 BCE, power was divided between kings at Tanis in the delta and the high priests of Amun at Thebes. Descendants of Libyan settlers ruled as pharaohs from the tenth century BCE. Around 728 BCE the Nubian king Piye of the Kingdom of Kush marched north and took the whole country, and his successors ruled as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, reviving old traditions and building in the classic style. Their rule ended when Assyria invaded between 671 and 663 BCE and sacked Thebes.

Psamtik I, who had been an Assyrian vassal at Sais, reunited Egypt and founded the Twenty-sixth or Saite Dynasty, a period of revival that relied on Greek and Carian mercenaries and opened trade with the Greek world. In 525 BCE Cambyses II added Egypt to the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. Persian rule was interrupted by revolts and, from around 404 BCE, by six decades of renewed independence under the last native dynasties. The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt in this period and described its customs at length. In 343 BCE the Persians returned and defeated Nectanebo II, the last native Egyptian pharaoh for more than two thousand years.

Alexander the Great took Egypt from the Persians without a fight in 332 BCE, visited the oracle of Amun at Siwa and founded Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast. After his death his general Ptolemy seized Egypt, declared himself king in 305 BCE and founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom. The Ptolemies ruled as pharaohs, built temples in the Egyptian style at Edfu, Dendera and Philae and married their siblings in imitation of Egyptian gods, but their court and administration were Greek.

Alexandria became the leading city of the Hellenistic period, with its lighthouse on the island of Pharos, one of the wonders of the ancient world, and its Museum and Library, which drew scholars such as the mathematician Euclid and the geographer Eratosthenes. A large Jewish community there produced the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Egyptian revolts, dynastic murders and wars with the Seleucid Empire weakened the kingdom, which fell increasingly under the shadow of Rome. Its last ruler, Cleopatra VII, allied herself first with Julius Caesar and then with Mark Antony. After their defeat by Octavian, the future Augustus, at Actium in 31 BCE, both took their own lives in Alexandria in 30 BCE.

As a province of the Roman Empire, Egypt was governed directly by the emperor through a prefect, and its grain fed the city of Rome. Alexandria remained a great centre of learning and trade with the Red Sea and India. Christianity arrived early, by tradition through Mark the Evangelist, and Egypt became one of its strongholds. The persecution under Diocletian from 303 CE was remembered so vividly that the Coptic calendar counts its years from his accession. Egypt gave Christianity monasticism, through Anthony and Pachomius in the desert, and theologians such as Athanasius of Alexandria. Pagan learning also survived for a time; the philosopher Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob in Alexandria in 415.

After the Roman Empire divided, Egypt belonged to the Byzantine Empire ruled from Constantinople. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 split the church: most Egyptian Christians rejected its definition of Christ's nature, and the Coptic Orthodox Church grew apart from the imperial church, which persecuted it. Between 619 and 629 the Sasanian Empire of Persia occupied Egypt, before the emperor Heraclius recovered it.

In 639 an Arab army under Amr ibn al-As, sent by the Rashidun Caliphate, entered Egypt. It took the Byzantine fortress of Babylon near Memphis in 641, and Alexandria surrendered by treaty, with the last Byzantine troops leaving in 642. Amr founded a new capital, Fustat, beside the Nile. Egypt was ruled by governors of the Umayyad Caliphate and, from 750, of the Abbasid Caliphate. Arabic gradually replaced Coptic as the spoken language, and Islam became the majority religion over several centuries, though Copts remained a large minority and Coptic survived as a church language.

As Abbasid power waned, governors made themselves independent. Ahmad ibn Tulun, a Turkish officer, ruled Egypt and Syria from 868 and built the great mosque that still bears his name; the Ikhshidid dynasty followed from 935.

In 969 the army of the Fatimid Caliphate, a Shia Ismaili dynasty from North Africa, conquered Egypt, and its general Jawhar founded a new royal city beside Fustat called al-Qahira, "the victorious": Cairo. The Fatimids founded the mosque and college of al-Azhar in 970 and made Egypt the centre of a rival caliphate to the Abbasids, controlling at times Syria, the holy cities of Arabia and North Africa. Trade through the Red Sea made Fatimid Egypt rich, and the documents of the Cairo Geniza show a thriving Jewish merchant community. The caliph al-Hakim, who ruled from 996 to 1021, was notorious for his erratic persecutions. Weakened by famine and military factions, the Fatimids could not prevent the Crusades from establishing a kingdom in Jerusalem from 1099.

Saladin, a Kurdish officer sent by the ruler of Syria, became vizier in 1169 and abolished the Fatimid caliphate in 1171, restoring Sunni Islam and founding the Ayyubid dynasty. He united Egypt and Syria, retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 and built the Citadel of Cairo. The Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides served at his court. His successors repelled Crusader attacks on the delta, but relied increasingly on mamluks, slave soldiers bought mainly from the Turkic steppe.

In 1250, during the Seventh Crusade led by Louis IX of France, the mamluk regiments murdered the last Ayyubid sultan, Turanshah, and took power. The Mamluk Sultanate was ruled by former slave soldiers, each new generation bought young from abroad and trained as cavalry. In 1260 the Mamluk sultan Qutuz and the commander Baybars defeated the Mongol Empire at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, halting the Mongol advance. Baybars, who then seized the throne, installed a member of the Abbasid family as a ceremonial caliph in Cairo, and his successors expelled the last Crusaders, taking Acre in 1291.

Under sultans such as al-Nasir Muhammad in the early 14th century, Cairo was the largest city in the Muslim world, filled with mosques, madrasas and tombs that still define its skyline, and its scholars included the historian Ibn Khaldun. The Black Death struck in 1347 and 1348 and returned repeatedly, killing a large share of the population and damaging agriculture. From 1382 the sultanate was ruled by Circassian mamluks, and Egypt grew rich again from taxing the spice trade between India and Europe, until the Portuguese opened the sea route around Africa.

In 1516 the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluks at Marj Dabiq in Syria, and in January 1517 he took Cairo; the last Mamluk sultan, Tumanbay II, was hanged at one of the city's gates. Egypt became a province of the Ottoman Empire, governed by a pasha sent from Istanbul and sending tribute and grain to the capital and the holy cities. The mamluk households survived as a local elite, and by the 18th century their leading beys, such as Ali Bey al-Kabir, often held real power. Famines and plague repeatedly reduced the population.

In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt to strike at British trade with India. He defeated the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids, but the British admiral Nelson destroyed his fleet at Aboukir Bay, and Cairo rose against the French. Napoleon returned to France in 1799, and his army surrendered to British and Ottoman forces in 1801. The scholars who accompanied the expedition produced the Description de l'Égypte, and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone allowed Jean-François Champollion to decipher hieroglyphs in 1822, founding modern Egyptology.

In the struggle that followed, Muhammad Ali, an officer from an Albanian contingent of the Ottoman army, was recognised as governor in 1805. In 1811 he had the leading Mamluks massacred at the Cairo Citadel. He built a conscript army and navy, set up factories, schools and a printing press, sent students to Europe and turned Egypt into an exporter of long-staple cotton through state monopolies. He conquered northern Sudan from 1820 and, after defeating the Ottomans, ruled Syria in the 1830s, until the European powers forced him back in 1840. In return he gained hereditary rule of Egypt for his family, which kept the throne until 1952.

His grandson Ismail, who took the title khedive, pursued rapid modernisation, laying out a new European-style Cairo. The Suez Canal, built by a French company with Egyptian forced labour, opened in 1869. Ismail's borrowing drove Egypt into bankruptcy, and in 1875 he sold the country's canal shares to Britain. European commissioners took control of the finances, and in 1879 Ismail was deposed. Resentment of foreign control and of the Turco-Circassian elite produced a nationalist movement in the army led by Colonel Ahmed Urabi.

In 1882 Britain bombarded Alexandria and defeated Urabi at Tel el-Kebir, beginning an occupation that lasted in one form or another until 1956. Egypt remained nominally Ottoman, but the British agent and consul-general, above all Lord Cromer, effectively governed, and Egypt became a strategic pillar of the British Empire on the route to India. In 1899 Britain and Egypt established joint rule over Sudan. The hanging of villagers after the Dinshaway incident of 1906 inflamed nationalist feeling.

When the Ottomans joined World War I against Britain in 1914, Britain declared a protectorate over Egypt. In March 1919 the exile of the nationalist leader Saad Zaghlul and his colleagues of the Wafd delegation sparked a nationwide revolution, with strikes and demonstrations joined by Muslims and Copts, men and women. Britain declared Egypt independent on 28 February 1922, reserving control of defence, the canal and Sudan. Fuad I became king, and a constitution of 1923 created a parliamentary monarchy, in which the popular Wafd party, the palace and the British competed for power. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, became a mass movement.

The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 limited British troops to the canal zone. In World War II Egypt was the main British base in the Middle East, and the battles of El Alamein in 1942 stopped the German and Italian advance on the Nile. Defeat in the 1948 war against the new state of Israel, corruption under King Farouk and clashes with British forces in the canal zone discredited the monarchy.

On 23 July 1952 a group of army officers, the Free Officers, seized power and forced Farouk to abdicate. Egypt was declared a republic in 1953 under General Muhammad Naguib, but the real leader was Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, who pushed Naguib aside and became president in 1956. Nasser carried out land reform, banned political parties, suppressed both communists and the Muslim Brotherhood, and agreed the withdrawal of British troops in 1954. Sudan became independent in 1956.

When the United States and Britain withdrew funding for the Aswan High Dam, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956. Britain, France and Israel invaded in October, but pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union forced them to withdraw, a political triumph that made Nasser the hero of Arab nationalism and a leader of the non-aligned movement in the Cold War. Egypt united with Syria as the United Arab Republic from 1958 until Syria seceded in 1961, nationalised most industry and built the High Dam with Soviet help; it was completed in 1970, and the temples of Abu Simbel were moved to save them from the flooding of Lake Nasser. Egyptian troops fought in the civil war in Yemen in the 1960s. In June 1967 Israel destroyed the Egyptian air force in the Six-Day War and occupied the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Nasser died in September 1970.

Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, expelled Soviet military advisers in 1972. On 6 October 1973 Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal in a surprise attack on Israeli positions in Sinai; the war ended militarily inconclusive, but restored Egyptian prestige. Sadat opened the economy to foreign investment, turned towards the United States, and in 1977 travelled to Jerusalem. The Camp David Accords of 1978 led to a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, under which Sinai was returned by 1982. Many Arab states broke with Egypt, which was suspended from the Arab League until 1989. On 6 October 1981 Sadat was assassinated by Islamist soldiers during a military parade.

Hosni Mubarak, his vice-president, ruled for almost thirty years under a state of emergency. Egypt remained a close ally of the United States and received large amounts of American military aid, and joined the coalition against Iraq in 1991. An Islamist insurgency in the 1990s targeted officials, Copts and tourists, culminating in the massacre of 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, at Luxor in 1997. The population grew rapidly, and privatisation in the 2000s brought growth but also widening inequality, while Mubarak appeared to be preparing his son Gamal to succeed him.

Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, mass protests began on 25 January 2011, centred on Tahrir Square in Cairo. After eighteen days, in which hundreds of protesters were killed, Mubarak resigned on 11 February and the armed forces took power. In 2012 Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won the first competitive presidential election with 51.7 percent of the vote. His decree of November 2012 placing his decisions beyond judicial review and a divisive new constitution provoked mass opposition, and on 3 July 2013, after huge demonstrations against him, the army commander Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed him from office. On 14 August 2013 security forces broke up the sit-ins of Morsi's supporters at Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda squares, killing many hundreds of people; Human Rights Watch counted at least 817 dead at Rabaa alone. The Brotherhood was banned, and tens of thousands of its members and other critics were imprisoned.

Sisi was elected president in 2014 and re-elected in 2018 in contests international observers did not consider free or fair. Constitutional amendments in 2019 lengthened the presidential term to six years and allowed him to stand again, and in December 2023 he won a third term with about 90 percent of the official vote, after his most prominent challenger failed to get on the ballot. His government has fought an Islamist insurgency in northern Sinai, built a New Administrative Capital east of Cairo and expanded the Suez Canal, while heavy borrowing led to a currency crisis and an expanded programme with the International Monetary Fund in 2024. Egypt has disputed with Ethiopia the effect of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile's flow.

During the war in Gaza that began in October 2023, Egypt, which borders the Palestinian territory at Rafah, acted with Qatar as a mediator between Israel and Hamas. On 13 October 2025 Sisi and the US president, Donald Trump, co-chaired a summit of world leaders at Sharm el-Sheikh in support of a ceasefire agreement. Weeks later, on 1 November 2025, the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza pyramids was formally inaugurated, displaying the complete treasure of Tutankhamun for the first time.