It's not just the Pharaonic monuments either - it's the legacy of the Greeks and Romans, the churches and monasteries of the early Christians, and the overwhelming profusion of art and architecture accumulated from centuries of successive Islamic dynasties.

Modern Egypt is an amalgam of these legacies and more, juxtaposed with the often incongruous influences of the 20th and 21st centuries. Mud-brick villages stand beside millennia-old ruins surrounded by buildings of steel and glass.

Bedouins live in goatskin tents and farmers till the earth with the simple tools of their ancestors. Some townsfolk dress in long flowing robes, others in Levis and Reeboks, and city traffic competes with donkey-drawn carts and wandering goats. Nowhere are these contrasts played out so colourfully as in Cairo, a massive city thronged with people and ringing to the sound of car horns, ghetto-blasters and muezzins summoning the faithful to prayer.

Egypt isn't all chaos and clatter, however. It's also a diver's dream dip, a trek across the sands on a camel or a long lazy punt down the Nile.

Deciding when to come to Egypt depends a lot on where you want to go. Everywhere south of Cairo is uncomfortably hot in the summer months (June-August), especially Luxor and Aswan, so winter (December-February) is definitely the best time to visit these areas. Summer is also the time when the Mediterranean coast is at its most crowded, but winter in Cairo can get pretty cool.

March to May is the best time to enjoy the warm days without the crush of bodies on the beaches and the midday heat of high summer.

Hacking a whopping square chunk out of Africa's northeast corner, Egypt stretches over more than a million square km. More than 95% of the land area is barren desert though, which has induced 90% of the population to squish into just 3% of the total land area, the fertile Nile Valley and Delta.

Egypt borders Libya in the west, Sudan in the south, the Mediterranean Sea in the north, and the Red Sea and Israel in the east. The eastern region, across the Suez Canal, is Sinai.

This region slopes up to the high mountains of Mt Katherine (Gebel Katarina at 2642m/8666ft is Egypt's highest point) and Mt Sinai. Along Egypt's Mediterranean coast there are countless white-sand beaches, some developed as tourist resorts but many still pristine and isolated. North of Cairo the Nile splits into a series of tributaries that flow into the Mediterranean.

Most of the animals worshipped by the ancient Egyptians are now extinct in the country. Gone are the leopards, cheetahs, oryx and hyenas, and only two of the three varieties of gazelle still survive.

There are plenty of rodents and bats, but domesticated camels and donkeys are the most visible forms of Egyptian animal life. There are around 430 species of birds, some of which breed in Egypt, but most pass through on migration from Europe to southern Africa. Up to two million birds are thought to pass over Egypt on annual migrations.

There are also 34 varieties of snakes, the best known of which is the cobra. Scorpions are common throughout the country, but being nocturnal, they are rarely seen. The Red Sea supports sharks, stingrays, turtles, dolphins, colourful corals, sponges, starfish and various molluscs.

Egypt's climate is hot and dry most of the year. During the winter months - December, January and February - average daily temperatures stay up around 20°C (68°F) on the Mediterranean coast and a pleasant 26°C (80°F) in Aswan. Maximum temperatures get to 31°C (88°F) and 50°C (122°F) respectively. Winter nights only get down to 8°C (45°F), a very Egyptian version of chilly. Alexandria receives the most rain with 19cm (7.5in) each year, while Aswan is almost bone-dry with just 2mm annually.

Between March and April the khamsi blows in from the Western Desert at up to 150kph (93mph).