Nile in the context of Cusae

The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Khafre, and the pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx. All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC. The site also includes several temples, cemeteries, and the remains of a workers' village.

The site is at the edge of the Western Desert, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) west of the Nile River in the city of Giza, and about 13 km (8.1 mi) southwest of the city centre of Cairo. It forms the northernmost part of the 16,000 ha (160 km; 62 sq mi) Pyramid Fields of the Memphis and its Necropolis UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979. The pyramid fields include the Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur pyramid complexes, which were all built in the vicinity of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis. Further Old Kingdom pyramid fields were located at the sites Abu Rawash, Zawyet El Aryan, and Meidum. Most of the limestone used to build the pyramids originates from the underlying Mokattam Formation.

A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high discharge. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods.

Because of regular flooding, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility since nutrients are deposited with the flood waters. This can encourage farming; some important agricultural regions, such as the Nile and Mississippi river basins, heavily exploit floodplains. Agricultural and urban regions have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and freshwater. However, the risk of inundation has led to increasing efforts to control flooding.

Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. It encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Palestinian territories. The territories share the vast majority of their borders with Israel, with the West Bank bordering Jordan to the east and the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its de facto administrative center. Gaza was its largest city prior to evacuations in 2023.

Situated at a continental crossroad, the Palestine region was ruled by various empires and experienced various demographic changes from antiquity to the modern era. It was treading ground for the Nile and Mesopotamian armies and merchants from North Africa, China and India. The region has religious significance. The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict dates back to the rise of the Zionist movement, supported by the United Kingdom during World War I. The war saw Britain occupying Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, where it set up Mandatory Palestine under the auspices of the League of Nations. Increased Jewish immigration led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after a proposed partitioning by the United Nations was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations.

Naucratis or Naukratis (Ancient Greek: Ναύκρατις, "Naval Command"; Egyptian: njwt-kꜣrṯ, nskꜣrṯ, pr-mryt, Coptic: Ⲡⲓⲉⲙⲣⲱ Piemro) was a city and trading-post in ancient Egypt, located on the Canopic (western-most) branch of the Nile river, south-east of the Mediterranean sea and the city of Alexandria. Naucratis was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Greek settlement in Egypt, serving as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Greek and Egyptian art and culture.

The modern villages of Kom Gi'eif, el-Nibeira and el-Niqrash cover the archaeological site, which is of great importance. It is the source of numerous art objects in many of the world's museums, as well as pottery inscribed with some of the earliest known examples of Greek writing.

The Nile Delta (Arabic: دلتا النيل, Delta an-Nīl or simply الدلتا, ad-Delta) is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest deltas. From Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east; it covers 240 km (150 mi) of the Mediterranean coastline and is a rich agricultural region. From north to south the delta is approximately 160 km (100 mi) in length. The Delta begins from Cairo.

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.

During the Iron Age and Classical antiquity, Libya (from Greek Λιβύη: Libyē, which came from Berber: Libu) referred to the area of North Africa directly west of the Nile river (Modern day Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco), not to be confused with the modern country of Libya, which only represents the eastern part of the territory at the time. Ancient Libya was one of the three parts of the world of the ancients (Libya, Asia, Europa). The territory also had part of the Mediterranean Sea named after it called the Libyan Sea or Mare Libycum which was the part of the Mediterranean south of Crete, between Cyrene and Alexandria.

Greek and Roman geographers placed the dividing line between Libya and Asia at the Nile because the entire region south of the Mediterranean and west of the Nile was homogeneous linguistically, and the Berber language was used all across North Africa as far as the Atlantic coast as well as racially by the Libyan people (Berbers) The area was divided during Roman times into four main regions: Mauretania, Numidia, Africa Preconsularis and Libya which retained the original name. In contrast, the areas of Sub-Saharan Africa were known as Aethiopia. Much later was the name Africa extended to the whole continent instead of just the Roman Province of Africa.

Nubia (/ˈnjuːbiə/, Nobiin: Nobīn, Arabic: النُوبَة, romanized: an-Nūba) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), and the first cataract of the Nile (south of Aswan in southern Egypt) or more strictly, Al Dabbah. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, the Kerma culture, which lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under Pharaoh Thutmose I around 1500 BC, whose heirs ruled most of Nubia for the next 400 years. Nubia was home to several empires, most prominently the Kingdom of Kush, which conquered Egypt in the eighth century BC during the reign of Piye and ruled the country as its 25th Dynasty.

From the 3rd century BC to 3rd century AD, northern Nubia was invaded and annexed to Egypt, ruled by the Greeks and Romans. This territory was known in the Greco-Roman world as Dodekaschoinos.

Egyptian astronomy started in prehistoric times, in the Predynastic Period. In the 5th millennium BCE, the stone circles at Nabta Playa may have made use of astronomical alignments. By the time the historical Dynastic Period began in the 3rd millennium BCE, the 365 day period of the Egyptian calendar was already in use, and the observation of stars was important in determining the annual flooding of the Nile.

The Egyptian pyramids were carefully aligned towards the pole star, and the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak was aligned on the rising of the midwinter Sun. Astronomy played a considerable part in fixing the dates of religious festivals and determining the hours of night, and temple astrologers were especially adept at watching the stars and observing the conjunctions and risings of the Sun, Moon, and planets, as well as the lunar phases.

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion.

The monument was sculpted from the limestone bedrock of the Eocene-aged Mokattam Formation and faces east on the Giza Plateau, on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, the Sphinx is part of the Memphite Necropolis and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Egypt, the Western Desert is an area of the Sahara that lies west of the river Nile, up to the Libyan border, and south from the Mediterranean Sea to the border with Sudan. It is named in contrast to the Eastern Desert which extends east from the Nile to the Red Sea, although both are part of the broader Libyan desert in North Africa. The Western Desert is mostly rocky desert, save for an area of sandy desert, known as the Great Sand Sea, lying to the west and extending across the Libyan border.The desert covers an area of 680,650 km (262,800 sq mi) which is two-thirds of the land area of the country. Its highest elevation is 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in the Gilf Kebir plateau to the far south-west of the country, on the Egypt-Sudan-Libya border.The Western Desert is barren and uninhabited save for a chain of oases which extend in an arc from Siwa, in the north-west, to Kharga in the south.It has been the scene of conflict in modern times, particularly during the Second World War.

Administratively the Western Desert is divided between various governorates; in the north and west, the Matrouh Governorate administers the area from the Mediterranean south to approx 27°40' N latitude, and the New Valley Governorate from there to the Sudan border, while in the east parts of the Western Desert lie in the Giza, Fayyum, Beni Suef, and Minya Governorates.

Giza (/ˈɡiːzə/; sometimes spelled Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza; Arabic: الجيزة, romanized: al-Jīzah, pronounced [ald͡ʒiːzah], Egyptian Arabic: الجيزة el-Gīza [elˈgiːzæ]) is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and sixteenth-largest city in Africa by population. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 4,458,135 as of 2023. It is located on the west bank of the Nile opposite central Cairo, and is a part of the Greater Cairo metropolis. Giza lies less than 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of Memphis (Men-nefer, today the village of Mit Rahina), which was the capital city of the unified Egyptian state during the reign of pharaoh Narmer, roughly 3100 BC.

Giza is most famous as the location of the Giza Plateau, the site of some of the most impressive ancient monuments in the world, including a complex of ancient Egyptian royal mortuary and sacred structures, among which are the Great Sphinx, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a number of other large pyramids and temples and the Grand Egyptian Museum. Giza has always been a focal point in Egypt's history due to its location close to Memphis, the ancient pharaonic capital of the Old Kingdom.

Downtown Cairo (Arabic: وسط البلد Wust al-Balad, "middle of town") is the colloquial name given to the 19th-century western expansion of Egypt's capital Cairo, between the historic medieval Cairo, and the Nile, which became the commercial center of the city during the 20th century. Given its rich architectural heritage from the era of Khedive Ismail, it has been officially named Khedival Cairo and declared by the government as a protected Area of Value, with many of its buildings also deemed protected. Administratively Wust al-Balad covers areas of qism Qasr al-Nil, and the Abdeen and Ezbekia districts. The protected Khedival Cairo covers a larger area extending south to Sayida Zeinab.

Ancient Egypt spans the period of Egyptian history from the early prehistoric settlements of the northern Nile valley to the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The pharaonic period, the period in which Egypt was ruled by a pharaoh, is dated from the 32nd century BC, when Upper and Lower Egypt were unified, until the country fell under Macedonian rule in 332 BC.

The Amazon River (US: /ˈæməzɒn/; Portuguese: rio Amazonas, Spanish: río Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the longest or second-longest river system in the world, a title which is disputed with the Nile.

The headwaters of the Apurímac River on Nevado Mismi had been considered, for nearly a century, the Amazon basin's most distant source until a 2014 study found it to be the headwaters of the Mantaro River on the Cordillera Rumi Cruz in Peru. The Mantaro and Apurímac rivers join, and with other tributaries form the Ucayali River, which in turn meets the Marañón River upstream of Iquitos, Peru, forming what countries other than Brazil consider to be the main stem of the Amazon. Brazilians call this section the Solimões River above its confluence with the Rio Negro forming what Brazilians call the Amazon at the Meeting of Waters (Portuguese: Encontro das Águas) at Manaus, the largest city on the river.

The African Union (AU) is a continental union of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the African Union. The bloc was launched on 9 July 2002 in Durban, South Africa. The intention of the AU was to replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), established on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa by 32 signatory governments; the OAU was disbanded on 9 July 2002. The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states.

The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa. The largest city in the AU is Lagos, Nigeria, while the largest urban agglomeration is Cairo, in Egypt. The African Union has more than 1.3 billion people and an area of around 30 million km (12 million sq mi) and includes world landmarks such as the Sahara and the Nile. The primary working languages are Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swahili. Within the African Union, there are official bodies, such as the Peace and Security Council and the Pan-African Parliament.

South Sudan (/suːˈdɑːn, -ˈdæn/), officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Sudan to the north, Ethiopia to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the southwest, Uganda to the south, Kenya to the southeast and to the west by the Central African Republic. South Sudan's diverse landscape includes vast plains and plateaus, dry and tropical savannahs, inland floodplains, and forested mountains. The Nile River system is the defining physical feature of the country, running south to north across its center, which is dominated by a large swamp known as the Sudd. South Sudan has an estimated population of just over 12.7 million in 2024. Juba is the capital and largest city.

Sudan was occupied by Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty and governed as an Anglo-Egyptian condominium until Sudanese independence in 1956. Following the First Sudanese Civil War, the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region was formed in 1972 and lasted until 1983. A second Sudanese civil war soon broke out in 1983 and ended in 2005 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Later that year, southern autonomy was restored when an Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan was formed. South Sudan became an independent state on 9 July 2011, following 98.8% support for independence in a January 2011 referendum. It is the most recent sovereign state with widespread recognition as of 2025. South Sudan descended into a civil war from 2013 to 2020, enduring rampant human rights abuses, including forced displacement, ethnic massacres, and killings of journalists by various parties. It has since been governed by a coalition formed by leaders of the former warring factions, Salva Kiir Mayardit (Sudan People's Liberation Movement or SPLM) and Riek Machar (Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition or SPLM-IO). The country continues to recover from the war while experiencing ongoing and systemic ethnic violence.