Nile Delta in the context of "Rosetta"

Lower Egypt (Arabic: مصر السفلى Miṣr as-Suflā) is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile River split into seven branches of the delta in Lower Egypt. Lower Egypt was divided into nomes and began to advance as a civilization after 3600 BC. Today, it contains two major channels that flow through the delta of the Nile River – Mahmoudiyah Canal (ancient Agathos Daimon) and Muways Canal (Arabic: بحر موَيس, "waterway of Moses").

Alexandria is a major city in Egypt. Lying at the western edge of the Nile River Delta, it extends about 40 km (25 mi) along the country's northern coast. It is Egypt's principal seaport, the second largest city after Cairo, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria is one of the largest and most important cities of antiquity and a leading hub for science, culture, and scholarship.

Nicknamed the "Bride of the Mediterranean" and "Pearl of the Mediterranean Coast", the city is a popular tourist destination and a major industrial centre. It is the sixth-largest city in the Arab world and in the Middle East, and the eleventh-largest city and urban area in Africa. Alexandria was established originally near an ancient Egyptian settlement named Rhacotis, which later became its Egyptian quarter. The city was made the capital of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and became the foremost commercial, intellectual, and cultural centre for much of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity; at one time, it was the most populous city in the ancient world. Alexandria was best known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its Great Library, the largest in the ancient world; and the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages.

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west; the Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital, largest city, and leading cultural center, while Alexandria is the second-largest city and an important hub of industry and tourism. With over 107 million inhabitants, Egypt is the third-most populous country in Africa and 15th-most populated in the world.

Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, later adopting Islam from the seventh century onwards. Alexandria, Egypt's former capital and currently second largest city, was a hub of global knowledge through its Library. Cairo became the capital of the Fatimid Caliphate in the tenth century and of the subsequent Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century. Egypt then became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517, until its local ruler Muhammad Ali established modern Egypt as an autonomous Khedivate in 1867. The country was then occupied by the British Empire along with Sudan and gained independence in 1922 as a monarchy.

The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.

The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at Sais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or during the Mamluk period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was found there in July 1799 by French army officer Pierre-François Bouchard during France's invasion of Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars. When the British defeated the French, they took the stone to London under the terms of the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. Since 1802, it has been on public display at the British Museum almost continuously and it is the most visited object there.

Papyrus (/pəˈpaɪrəs/ pə-PY-rəs) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing material. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus (plural: papyri or papyruses) can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.

Papyrus was first known to have been used in Egypt (at least as far back as the First Dynasty), as the papyrus plant was once abundant across the Nile Delta. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region. Apart from writing material, ancient Egyptians employed papyrus in the construction of other artifacts, such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets.

The Northern Coast of Egypt (Egyptian Arabic: الساحل الشمالى, El Sahel El Shamali, . "The Northern Egyptian Coast" extends for about 1,050 km (650 mi) along the Mediterranean Sea, it covers entirely the northern territory of Egypt. It is one of the longest Mediterranean coastlines, and is popularly known of sandy beaches and crystal clear water.

The city of Alexandria lies at the center of Egypt's Mediterranean coastline in Lower Egypt (northern Egypt), as chosen by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE. The North Coast has been the hub of sea travel between the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile Delta for over 2,300 years. During summer, Egyptians usually travel to the North Coast to flee heat in other towns and cities in Egypt. They stay in villages and resorts located in Sidi Abdel Rahman, El Alamein, and Ras El Hekma, amongst other areas.

Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world, and the Middle East. The Greater Cairo metropolitan area is one of the largest in the world by population with over 22 million people.

The area that would become Cairo was part of ancient Egypt, as the Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis are near-by. Located near the Nile Delta, the predecessor settlement was Fustat following the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 next to an existing ancient Roman fortress, Babylon. Subsequently, Cairo was founded by the Fatimid dynasty in 969. It later superseded Fustat as the main urban centre during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods (12th–16th centuries).

Rhacotis (Egyptian: r-ꜥ-qd(y)t, Greek Ῥακῶτις; also romanized as Rhakotis) was the name for a city on the northern coast of Egypt at the site of Alexandria. Classical sources from the Greco-Roman era in both Ancient Greek and the Egyptian language suggest Rhacotis as an older name for Alexandria before the arrival of Alexander the Great.

Rhacotis was located west of the now-silted Canopic branch of the Nile. Unlike ports within the Nile Delta, it was reliably accessible to large ships, and enough water for a city could be supplied by a canal. It is also described as the home of sentinels who protected the Egyptian kingdom from outsiders.

A river delta is a landform, archetypically triangular, created by the deposition of the sediments that are carried by the waters of a river, where the river merges with a body of slow-moving water or with a body of stagnant water. The creation of a river delta occurs at the river mouth, where the river merges into an ocean, a sea, or an estuary, into a lake, a reservoir, or (more rarely) into another river that cannot carry away the sediment supplied by the feeding river. Etymologically, the term river delta derives from the triangular shape (Δ) of the uppercase Greek letter delta. In hydrology, the dimensions of a river delta are determined by the balance between the watershed processes that supply sediment and the watershed processes that redistribute, sequester, and export the supplied sediment into the receiving basin.

River deltas are important in human civilization, as they are major agricultural production centers and population centers. They can provide coastline defence and can impact drinking water supply. They are also ecologically important, with different species' assemblages depending on their landscape position. On geologic timescales, they are also important carbon sinks.