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By some accounts there are more than 40 million Coptic Orthodox Christians in the world: they are found primarily in Egypt (roughly 10 million), Ethiopia (roughly 30 million), and Eritrea (roughly 2 million), but there are significant numbers in Sudan and Israel, and in diaspora throughout the world. However, as applied to the Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia, which before 1950 was a part of the Coptic Church of Egypt, the word Coptic can be considered a misnomer because it means Egyptian. The Eritrean Orthodox Church similarly became independent of the Tewahedo Church during the 1990s. These three churches remain in full communion with each other and with the other Oriental Orthodox churches.

Approximately one-third of Egyptian labor is engaged directly in farming, and many others work in the processing or trading of agricultural products. Practically all Egyptian agriculture takes place in some 25,000 km˛ (6 million acres) of fertile soil in the Nile Valley and Delta. Some desert lands are being developed for agriculture, including the ambitious Toshka project in Upper Egypt, but some other fertile lands in the Nile Valley and Delta are being lost to urbanization and erosion.

Coptic Christianity became popular in the Roman and Byzantine periods, and Egypt was indeed one of the strongest early Christian communities. Today, Christians constitute about 10% of the population.

As of 1990, 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 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.

The Nile valley forms a natural geographic and economic unit, being bounded to the east and west by deserts, to the north by the sea and to the south by the Cataracts of the Nile. The need to have a single authority to manage the waters of the Nile led to the creation of the world's first state in Egypt in about 3000 BC.

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.

Ethnic minorities include a small number of Bedouin Arab nomads in the Sinai and eastern and western deserts, as well as some Nubians clustered along the Nile in Upper (southern) Egypt who are estimated for about 0.8% of the population.

The Egyptian judicial system is based on European, primarily French, legal concepts and methods. Under the several governments during the presidency of Mubarak, the courts have demonstrated increasing independence, and the principles of due process and judicial review have gained greater respect. The legal code is derived largely from the Napoleonic Code. Marriage and personal status are primarily based on the religious law of the individual concerned. Thus, there are three forms of Family Law in Egypt, Islamic, Christian, and secular (based on the French Family Laws).

Following the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt became an important world transportation hub; however, also fell heavily into debt. Ostensibly to protect its investments, Britain seized control of Egypt's government in 1882, but nominal allegiance to the Ottoman Empire continued until 1914.

The Egyptians are fairly heterogeneous people. Mediterranean (such as Greek and Italian) and Arab influences appear in the North, and there are indigenous black populations in the South. Many theories has been proposed on the origins of the Egyptians, however none are conclusive, and the most widely accepted theory is that Egyptian society was the result of a mix of east african and asiatic people who moved to the Nile Valley after the ice age. The bulk of Modern Egyptian society are heterogeneous but maintain cultural ties to the ancient Egyptian society which has always been regarded as rural and most populous compared to the neighbouring demographics. The Egyptian people spoke only languages from the Afro-Asiatic family (previously known as Hamito-semitic)

Egypt's peculiar geography made it a difficult country to attack, which is why Pharaonic Egypt was for so long an independent and self-contained state. Once Egypt did succumb to foreign rule; however, it proved unable to escape from it, and for 2,300 years Egypt was governed by foreigners: Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks and British. When President Nasser (President 1954-1970) once said that he was the first native Egyptian to exercise sovereign power in Egypt since the last Pharaoh, Nectanebo II, was deposed by the Persians in 343 BC, he was only slightly exaggerating.