Top Egypt Resources

Though considered a low-income country, Egypt has a thriving media and arts industry, with more than 30 satellite channels and more than 100 motion pictures produced a year. To bolster its media industry, especially with the keen competition from the Persian Gulf states and Lebanon, it has built a large media city that it has promoted as the "Hollywood of the East". Egypt has the only opera house amongst Arab countries.

The Egyptian military provides indirect support for the foreign policy of Egypt in the region. Egypt is the strongest military power on the African continent, and the second largest in the Middle East, after Israel.

The Egyptians are a fairly homogeneous people. Mediterranean and Arab influences appear in the north, and there is some mixing in the south with the Nubians of northern Sudan. Many theories has been proposed on the origins of the Egyptians, however non 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 still maintains a homogenous genetic tie to the ancient Egyptian society which has always been regarded as rural and most populous compared to the neighboring demographics. The Egyptian people spoke only languages from the Afro-Asiatic family (previously known as Hamito-semitic) throughout their history starting with Old Egyptian, to modern Arabic.

During the Greco-Roman period (332 BC–AD 639), Egyptian literature was translated into other languages, and Greco-Roman literature fused with native art into a new style of writing. From this period comes the Rosetta Stone, which became the key to unlocking the mysteries of Egyptian writing to modern scholarship. The great city of Alexandria boasted its famous Library of almost half a million handwritten books during the third century BC. Alexandria's centre of learning also produced the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint.

The United States is a major supplier of wheat, corn, and soybean products to Egypt, almost all through commercial sales. Egypt is, in fact, the U.S.'s largest market for wheat sales. U.S. agricultural sales to Egypt total $1 billion annually. U.S. food assistance programs to Egypt ended in 1992 as Egypt became more prosperous. Egypt continues to receive modest food assistance through the World Food Program and from France.

Crude oil production has been in decline for several years, from 45,200,000 t in 93/94 to 37,000,000 t in 99/00. Oil production in late 2001 was about 118,000 m³ (740,000 barrels) per day. To minimize the growing domestic demand of petroleum products (approximately 23 mmt) Egypt is encouraging the production of natural gas. Natural gas output continues to increase and reached 18 mmt of oil equivalents in 2001.