This ancient land, 97 percent desert with the world's longest river running through it, encompasses more than 6,000 years of history and culture that is both world famous and mysterious, posing questions that even the most learned experts still cannot answer.



Since the founding of a unified kingdom by King Narmer (also known as Menes) around 3150 BC, Egypt has been the stage upon which a long history of invasion, outward expansion, vast buiding products and scientific, philological and medical discoveries were made over the course of nine major periods (or kingdoms) sub-divided into more than 20 dynasties, which shaped the people and the land in ways that we still can barely understand.



Egyptians themselves long referred to their unified country as tawy, meaning "two lands", and later used the word kemet, or "black land", a reference to the fertile black soil of the Nile river delta.



As its culture evolved and flourished as outlined below, it always remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, culture, arts, language and customs, despite the many wars, foreign occupations and other forces that have shaped the people and their environment over the past six thousand years.









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