Egypt from the air

Twenty-five centuries ago, Herodotus described Egypt as ‘The gift of the Nile’. The modern visitor enjoys one advantage he lacked; nothing captures the miracle of Egypt so convincingly as the view from the air. For most of its length, the valley of the Nile is no more than a few miles wide, starkly bordered by ochre deserts that stretch to the sea. Massed within this fragile strip of green is an astonishing concentration of life, both the life of today and a myriad past lives reaching back to the birth of civilization. There are the temples and tombs of the pharaohs, the desert monasteries of the early Christians, the mosques and capitals of caliphs and sultans, khedives and kings. Beyond the valley and its human splendours lie unspoiled and inaccessible natural wonders - the mountains of Sinai; the rich coral reefs of the Red Sea; the pristine calm of the desert. Only when seen from the air does the complexity and beauty of this ancient country reveal itself with such unclouded clarity.