Egypt travel guide
Egyptian food, festivals, crafts, music and modern culture.
Food & CultureEgyptian cotton is prized because most of Egypt's crop is extra-long-staple cotton, whose long, fine fibres spin into stronger, softer and smoother…
Food & CultureReal papyrus is made from strips of the papyrus plant's pith laid in two crossing layers and pressed into a sheet, and it shows a visible grid of…
Food & CultureEgyptian alabaster is a banded, translucent form of calcite, carved in Egypt for more than 4,500 years and still worked by hand in villages on Luxor's…
Food & CultureEgyptian perfume oils are concentrated, alcohol-free scents sold by the millilitre from large glass flasks. Most are blends of fragrance oils and some…
Food & CultureEgypt is a good place to buy gold and silver jewellery, from made-to-order cartouches to Nubian and Bedouin-style silver. Gold is priced by weight at…
Food & CultureEgypt makes hand-knotted wool and silk carpets, flat-woven kilims, Bedouin rugs and pictorial tapestries such as those of the Wissa Wassef centre at…
Food & CultureCairo's metalworkers make pierced brass lamps, engraved copper trays and the coloured-glass fanous lanterns hung for Ramadan, and its glassblowers…
Food & CultureKhayamiya is Egyptian appliqué: shapes of coloured cotton hand-stitched onto a heavy backing to make the panels that line ceremonial tents, now also…
Food & CultureSham el-Nessim is Egypt's national spring holiday, held on the Monday after Coptic (Orthodox) Easter and celebrated by Muslim and Christian Egyptians…
Food & CultureEgypt celebrates two Eids: Eid al-Fitr, which ends Ramadan and is expected around 9–10 March 2027, and Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice,…
Food & CultureA moulid is a festival for a holy figure's birthday, held by Egyptian Muslims for the Prophet and for Sufi saints, and by Copts for the Virgin Mary…
Food & CultureEgypt's Coptic Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on 7 January, following the old Julian calendar, after a 43-day fast that begins on 25…
Food & CultureEgypt has been the capital of Arab music for a century, home to Umm Kulthum, Abdel Halim Hafez and Mohammed Abdel Wahab, whose songs still play in…
Food & CultureEgypt has the oldest and largest film industry in the Arab world, and Cairo's studios made the musicals, melodramas and comedies that taught the…
Food & CultureModern Egyptian art began with the Cairo School of Fine Arts in 1908 and pioneers such as the sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar and the painter Mahmoud Said,…
Food & CultureNubians are the indigenous people of the Nile valley from Aswan into northern Sudan, with their own languages, Nobiin and Kenzi, their own…
Food & CultureEgypt's Bedouin are Arabic-speaking tribes of the deserts, best known to travellers in South Sinai, where tribes such as the Mzeina, Jebeliya and…
Food & CultureEgyptian food is hearty, inexpensive home and street cooking built on bread, beans, rice, lentils and vegetables, seasoned with cumin, coriander,…
Food & CultureKoshari is Egypt's best-known everyday dish: a bowl of rice, brown lentils, short macaroni and chickpeas, topped with a cumin-spiced tomato sauce,…
Food & CultureFul medames is a dish of small fava beans simmered slowly until soft, then mashed and dressed with oil, cumin, salt and lemon, and scooped up with…
Food & CultureTa'ameya is the Egyptian form of falafel, made from soaked, skinned fava beans ground with fresh herbs, onion and garlic, then deep-fried. It is…
Food & CultureMolokhia is a green soup-stew made from the finely chopped leaves of jute mallow, simmered briefly in chicken, rabbit or meat stock and finished with…
Food & CultureMahshi means stuffed, and in Egypt it is a tray of vine leaves, cabbage rolls, courgettes, eggplants, capsicums and tomatoes filled with rice, tomato…
Food & CultureFeteer meshaltet is a round, flaky Egyptian pastry made by stretching dough paper-thin, brushing it generously with ghee and folding it into dozens of…
Food & CultureHawawshi is a round of Egyptian baladi bread split open, stuffed with minced beef or lamb mixed with onion, capsicum, chilli, parsley and spices, then…
Food & CultureFattah is Egypt's great feast dish: layers of toasted baladi bread soaked in meat broth, white rice and a garlic-vinegar tomato sauce, topped with…
Food & CultureEgyptian desserts fall into three families: syrup-soaked semolina and pastry sweets such as basbousa and konafa, creamy milk puddings such as om ali,…
Food & CultureThe drinks to try in Egypt are karkade (hibiscus tea, hot or iced), sahlab (a thick, hot milk drink for winter), asab (fresh sugar cane juice),…
Food & CultureEgyptians drink strong black tea (shai) all day, usually very sweet, and thick Turkish-style coffee (ahwa) ordered by sugar level: sada (none),…
Food & CultureEgypt's everyday bread is aish baladi, a round wholemeal flatbread that puffs into a pocket and is used to scoop up almost every meal; aish means life…
Food & CultureEgyptian street food follows the clock: ful and ta'ameya from carts and counters in the morning, koshari and liver or sausage sandwiches at lunch and…
Food & CultureThe best seafood in Egypt is in Alexandria, where you choose fish and prawns from an iced display, pay by the kilo and have them grilled, fried or…
Food & CultureA traditional Egyptian breakfast is a spread of small plates eaten with warm baladi bread: ful medames, ta'ameya, eggs, white cheese, salad, pickles…
Food & CultureThe spices worth buying in Egypt are cumin, coriander, dukkah, dried hibiscus, black seed, fenugreek and dried molokhia, bought from an attar (spice…
Food & CultureAgatha Christie knew Egypt well: she spent a winter in Cairo as a young woman and took a Nile trip in the 1930s, staying at Aswan's Old Cataract…
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