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Egypt GEOGRAPHY
Physical Size and Borders
Egypt, covering 1,001,449 square kilometers of land, is about
the same size as Texas and New Mexico combined. The country's
greatest distance from north to south is 1,024 kilometers, and
from east to west, 1,240 kilometers. The country is located in
northeastern Africa and includes the Sinai Peninsula (also seen
as Sinai), which is often considered part of Asia. Egypt's
natural boundaries consist of more than 2,900 kilometers of
coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf
of Aqaba, and the Red Sea
(see
fig. 1).
Egypt has land boundaries with Israel, Libya, Sudan, and the
Gaza Strip, a Palestinian area formerly administered by Egypt and
occupied by Israel since 1967. The land boundaries are generally
straight lines that do not conform to geographic features such as
rivers. Egypt shares its longest boundary, which extends 1,273
kilometers, with Sudan. In accordance with the Anglo-Egyptian
Condominium Agreement of 1899, this boundary runs westward from
the Red Sea along the twenty-second parallel, includes the
Sudanese Nile salient (Wadi Halfa salient), and continues along
the twenty-second parallel until it meets the twenty-fifth
meridian. The Sudanese Nile salient, a finger-shaped area along
the Nile River (Nahr an Nil) north of the twenty-second parallel,
is nearly covered by Lake Nasser, which was created when the
Aswan High Dam was constructed in the 1960s. An "administrative"
boundary, which supplements the main Egyptian-Sudanese boundary
permits nomadic tribes to gain access to water holes at the
eastern end of Egypt's southern frontier. The administrative
boundary departs from the international boundary in two places;
Egypt administers the area south of the twenty-second parallel,
and Sudan administers the area north of it.
Egypt shares all 1,150 kilometers of the western border with
Libya. This border was defined in 1925 under an agreement with
Italy, which had colonized Libya. Before and after World War II,
the northern border was adjusted, resulting in the return of the
village of As Sallum to Egyptian sovereignty. Egypt shares 255
kilometers of its eastern border in Sinai with Israel and 11
kilometers with the Gaza Strip.
Egypt is divided into twenty-six governorates (sometimes
called provinces), which include four city governorates:
Alexandria (Al Iskandariyah), Cairo (Al Qahirah), Port Said (Bur
Said) and Suez; the nine governorates of Lower Egypt in the Nile
Delta region; the eight governorates of Upper Egypt along the
Nile River south from Cairo to Aswan; and the five frontier
governorates covering Sinai and the deserts that lie west and
east of the Nile. All governorates, except the frontier ones, are
in the Nile Delta or along the Nile Valley and Suez Canal.
Data as of December 1990
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