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Egyptian music began its recorded history in the 1910s, at the same time as composers like Sayed Darwish's first mixtures of traditional Egyptian and western musical forms. Since, some of the Arab world's biggest musical stars have been Egyptian, including Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Umm Kulthum, Amr Diab, Mohamed Al-Qasabji and Zakariyya Ahmad. Kulthum was especially popular, and is considered the most successful Egyptian recording artist in history. Most of these stars, including Kalthum, sang Arab classical music. Some, like Abd el-Halim Hafez, were associated with the nationalist revolution in 1952

Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali served as Secretary General of the United Nations from 1991 to 1996.

In the Coptic Church only men may be ordained, and they must be married before they are ordained, if they wish to be married. In this respect they follow the same practices as does the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The social origins of Islamists changed after the 1952 Revolution. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood had appealed primarily to urban civil servants and white and blue-collar workers. After the early 1970s, the Islamic revival attracted followers from a broad spectrum of social classes. Most activists were university students or recent graduates; they included rural-urban migrants and urban middle-class youth whose fathers were middle-level government employees or professionals. Their fields of study--medicine, engineering, military science, and pharmacy--were among the most highly competitive and prestigious disciplines in the university system. The rank-and- file members of Islamist groups have come from the middle class, the lower-middle class, and the urban working class.

The League of Arab States headquarters is in Cairo. The Secretary General of the League has traditionally been an Egyptian. Former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa is the present Secretary General of the Arab League.

The Muslim Brotherhood's reemergence as a political force coincided with the proliferation of Islamic groups. Some of these groups espoused the violent overthrow of the government while others espoused living a devout life of rigorous observance of religious practices. It is impossible to list all the Islamic groups that emerged in the late 1970s because many of them had diffuse structures and some of the more militant groups were underground. Egypt's defeat and loss of territory in the June 1967 Six-Day War was the main cause for the growth of religiously inspired political activism. Muslims tended to view the humiliating experience as the culmination of 150 years of foreign intrusion and an affront to their vision of a true Islamic community. Islamic tradition rejected the idea of non-Muslims dominating Muslim society. Such a state of affairs discredited Muslim rulers who permitted it to persist. It was, therefore, incumbent on believers to end the domination and restore the true supremacy of Islam. As part of their Sunni creed, the most radical activists adopted jihad and committed themselves to battling unbelievers and impious Muslims. During the 1970s and 1980s, Islamists perpetrated a number of violent acts, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981.

The Shura Council is the 264-member upper house of Parliament created in 1980. The Shura Council roughly translates to the ‘Consultative Council’ in English. In the Shura Council 174 members are directly elected and 88 members are appointed by the President of the Republic for 6-year terms. One half of the Shura Council is renewed every three years.

The government has struggled to ready the economy for the new millennium through economic reform and massive investment in communications and physical infrastructure, much financed from U.S. aid. Egypt is the second largest recipient of such funds from the United States after Israel. Economic conditions are starting to improve considerably after a period of stagnation due to the adoption of more liberal economic policies by the government, as well as increased revenues from tourism and a booming stock market.

Some famous Egyptians include: Gamal Abdel Nasser (former president), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (former Secretary General of the United Nations), Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize-winning novelist), Umm Kulthum (singer), Omar Sharif (actor), Ahmed Zewail (Nobel Prize-winning chemist), Mohamed ElBaradei (Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Anwar Sadat (former president and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize),

In the Upper Nile Valley, around Kom Ombo and Aswan, there are about 300,000 speakers of Nubian languages, mainly Nobiin, but also Kenuzi-Dongola. The Berber languages are represented by Siwi, spoken by about 5,000 around the Siwa Oasis. There are over a million speakers of the Domari language (an Indo-Aryan language related to Romany), mostly living north of Cairo, and there are about 60,000 Greek speakers in Alexandria. Approximately 77,000 speakers of Bedawi (a Beja language) live in the Eastern Desert.

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 word "mummy" is thought to be derived from the Arabic word mumiyah, which maens bitumen. Because of the the blackened skin of unwrapped mummies, bitumen was once thought to be used extensively in ancient Egyptian embalming procedures. Another possible source for the name is the Egyptian Coptic word mum, for wax of which the use in Egyptian embalming was in fact documented.

Popular Islam ranges from informal prayer sessions or Qur'an study to organized cults or orders. Because of the pervasive sexual segregation of Egypt's Islamic society, men and women often practice their religion in different ways. A specifically female religious custom is the zar, a ceremony for helping women placate spirits who are believed to have possessed them. Women specially trained by their mothers or other women in zar lore organize the ceremonies. A zar organizer holds weekly meetings and employs music and dance to induce ecstatic trances in possessed women. Wealthy women sometimes pay to have private zars conducted in their homes; these zars are more elaborate than public ones, last for several days, and sometimes involve efforts to exorcise spirits.

As early as 4000 BC, ancient Egyptians were playing harps and flutes, as well as two indigenious instruments: the ney and the oud. However, there is no notation of Egyptian music before the 7th century AD, when Egypt became part of the Arab world. Percussion and vocal music became important at this time, which has remained an important part of Egyptian music today.