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Modern Egypt: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
'''The Arab Republic of Egypt''' (''Gumhūriyyat Miṣr al-ʿArabiyyah'') is a republic in northern Africa. The country is mostly desert, except for a thin strip along the Nile, plus a triangular bit (the Delta) where the Nile meets the sea. Egypt is traditionally divided into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, with Lower Egypt being the northern part of the country (i.e. the Delta), and Upper Egypt being the parts south. Where Upper Egypt meets Lower is [[Cairo]], the nation's capital, and at 20 million-some inhabitants Africa's largest metropolitan area. The famous Pyramids are also there, and Memphis—the capital of the Old Kingdom—is not too far away, proving that some places are just more strategic than others. Arabic is the official language and the language of the people, but the issue is kind of...complex. For that matter, its history and culture are also rather complex; see [[History of Modern Egypt]] for details.
Although Arabic is the major language of Egypt, the majority of Egyptians are not ethnically Arab according to the traditional definition; rather, your average Egyptian descends chiefly from the actual Ancient Egyptians, with at most a small number of ancestors hailing from the Arabian Peninsula. Whether or not Egyptians ought to be considered Arabs anyway [[Patriotic Fervor|is a point of contention]]. The Coptic Christian minority tends to identify more with Egypt's native ethnic group — Copts — seeing Arabization and Islam as hand-in-hand representations of foreign invaders (they still speak Arabic as a first language, of course, and Coptic only as a liturgical language). The Muslim majority is more divided: while some emphasize a common Arab identity, others prefer an Egyptian one, and still others prefer to identify with the Muslim ''Ummah'' (community of believers) as a whole. Many more, perhaps most, see no contradiction between the three.
However, Egypt, by dint of its large population (80 million out of ~200 million Arabic-speakers) and other factors, is widely considered to be the center of Arabic culture today: a very large proportion of Arabic movies, [[Soap Opera]]s, music and literature come out of Egypt. In fact, the joke in Arab high culture is that Egypt writes, [[Lebanon]] publishes, and [[Iraq]] reads. The cultural impact of Egypt is—or at least was—great enough to deserve two articles: one on [[Egyptian Culture]], and one on their biggest cultural export, [[Egyptian Movies]]. (Sadly, they're not written yet.)
Egypt is also a largely Muslim country (80% to 90%), and the native Coptic Christian church (a form of [[Orthodox Christianity|Oriental Orthodoxy]]) provides most of the rest. Despite what you might see in certain media, the numbers of Egyptians still worshiping [[Egyptian Mythology|Ra, Osiris and the others]] are not thought to be great.<ref>[[Neo-Paganism|And anyway, of those that still do there are probably more outside of Egypt than inside]].</ref>
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