Egypt is commonly misunderstood to be a large country. While it does occupy more than 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) — twice the size of France — less than 35,000 square kilometers of that is inhabited. This tiny parcel is the Egyptian core and home to 99 percent of Egypt's population of 83 million, stretched thin along the banks of the Nile River in a strip that is almost always less than 30 kilometers (18 miles) wide. Only at the northern delta (the Nile flows from south to north) does this zone of habitation finally widen and fan out into the Mediterranean. Cairo, the modern-day capital, sits at the point where the river transforms into the delta. Alexandria, Egypt's premier port and opening to the world since the third century B.C., sits near the western edge of the alluvial fan.
