ABSTRACT
Egypt, or the United Arab Republic, has a distinctive and un-African personality. Most of Egypt is desert. An examination of the geography of Egypt is helped by the country’s falling conveniently into four distinct physical divisions: the Western desert, the Eastern desert, the Sinai Peninsula and the Nile valley and delta. Some 96 per cent of Egypt’s population is located in the Nile valley and delta. From the earliest times this was the home of man where the reliable flooding and automatic renewal of fertility contrasted with the enclosing desert. Agriculture supplies, either directly or processed, about 85 per cent of all exports. Thanks to the irrigation system already outlined, Nile water is now conserved and so distributed that the greater part of Egypt’s farmland receives adequate water during the early summer months when the Nile is at its lowest and the land otherwise would be parched.
