A tourist boat silhouetted against the setting sun ferries its passengers down the Nile.
The thin green corridor of the Nile Valley is a mere 7.5 percent of Egypt's land. The contrasting green and umber of the Egyptian landscape forms a sharp line between fertile earth and parched desert. "The gift of the Nile—that’s what the ancients called this country," said a local man.
(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Into an Antique Land," March 1999, National Geographic Traveler magazine)
