Geography of North Africa questions

The English name Egypt is derived from the Ancient Greek Aígyptos, but it has nothing in common with the local name of the country (except maybe with the Late Egyptian name of Memphis - Hikuptah). Ancient Egyptians called their land Kemet, meaning "black soil" (as opposed to the desert). Today, Misr is the official name of Egypt, while Masr is the Egyptian-local pronunciation in the Egyptian Arabic.

The Berber language is ancient and has 2200 years of written tradition. In 2011 Berber became a constitutionally official language of Morocco, after years of persecution (under the policy of Arabization). There is a movement among speakers of the closely related varieties of Northern Berber to unite them under a standard language.

With 90M inhabitants, Egypt is by far the most populous Arab country. The population of Algeria is 38M, Iraq 35M, Sudan 35M, Morocco 32M, and Saudi Arabia 31M.

This is an Egyptian soccer fan. She gets her national flag drawn on her face on a street in Cairo.

The ruins of Carthage are just 15 km north of Tunis. It is one of the main tourist attractions of Tunisia.

The Mediterranean Sea makes up the majority of Israel's coastline. But Israel also has a small coastline on the Red Sea in the south, with the port of Eilat. This 11 km (7 miles) wide strip of land separates Egypt from Jordan, so tourists visiting Egypt typically need to approach Jordan by the sea if they want to visit Petra.

This is an astronaut photo of the Al Khufrah Oasis in Libya. The circular shape of fields is characteristic of center pivot irrigation. These fields are approximately 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) in diameter. Lighter colors indicate fields that have been harvested recently or just planted.

The Red Sea is very saline due to high evaporation, very little precipitation, almost no river inflow and isolation from the rest of the Indian Ocean. Salinity reaches 41 ‰ in the northern part (Average for the world's seawater is ~35 ‰).

Most of the Sahara consists of rocky hamada; ergs (large areas covered with sand dunes) form only about 20% of the total area.

Algeria has been the largest country in Africa since the division of Sudan in July 2011.