The Colours of Egypt

Here's a thought to sit with: when the ancient Greeks visited the pyramids, the pyramids were already ancient to them. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landing than to the building of Giza. Egypt doesn't do history. Egypt is the yardstick history is measured with.

Where it all began

Five thousand years ago, King Narmer unified the two lands along the Nile, and what followed was the longest-running civilisation the planet has ever seen: thirty dynasties, hieroglyphs that taught stone to speak, and the Great Pyramid, the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, which held the title of tallest human structure for 3,800 years. Then Alexandria, whose lighthouse and library made it the brain of antiquity. Then Islamic Cairo, whose Al-Azhar has been teaching since 970 AD, among the oldest universities on Earth. The Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, unlocked the whole archive; the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, redrew world trade; and the modern republic began in 1952. Every era of human civilisation has an Egyptian chapter.

The minds

Imhotep, architect of the first pyramid around 2650 BC, was history's first named engineer and physician, a real man later worshipped as a god of medicine. In our era: Naguib Mahfouz took the Nobel in Literature in 1988 for novels that made Cairo's alleys immortal; Ahmed Zewail won the chemistry Nobel in 1999 for filming molecules in motion, femtochemistry, born in Alexandria's schools; Magdi Yacoub became one of the world's great heart surgeons; and Umm Kulthum, the Voice of Egypt, gave monthly radio concerts that emptied streets from Morocco to Iraq. When she died in 1975, millions walked in her funeral. Name another singer with that power. You can't.

Made in Egypt

Egyptian cotton became the world's byword for luxury bedding for a reason: the long-staple fibre of the Nile Delta. The Suez Canal carries roughly a tenth of all global trade past Egyptian shores, every day. Add natural gas from the Mediterranean, fruit and vegetables feeding Europe in winter, the Arab world's biggest film industry, Cairo was called Hollywood on the Nile for a century, and a tourism sector with, let's be honest, unfair natural advantages.

Where to go

Cairo: the Giza plateau at opening time, before the heat and the crowds, then the new Grand Egyptian Museum with Tutankhamun's full treasure, and Khan el-Khalili bazaar for tea and haggling as contact sport. Luxor, the world's greatest open-air museum, hot-air balloon over the Valley of the Kings at dawn, thank us later. Aswan for Nubian villages, felucca sails and Philae temple on its island.

Then the Egypt beyond the postcards. Abu Simbel, where Ramses II's temples were moved, entire, by a 1960s UNESCO operation to save them from the rising lake. The White Desert, wind-carved chalk mushrooms glowing under the stars. Siwa oasis near the Libyan border, salt lakes you float in, date groves, and the oracle Alexander the Great crossed a desert to consult. And the Red Sea at Dahab or Marsa Alam: some of the finest reef diving on the planet at backpacker prices.

Culture, on a plate and in the ear

Eat koshary, the carb-on-carb national dish that costs pennies and satisfies like a feast. Ful and taameya for breakfast, molokhia like a grandmother's hug, mango juice in season. Hear the call to prayer roll across Cairo at sunset from a rooftop, one of travel's great sound experiences. Watch a football derby, Ahly versus Zamalek, from a safe café distance. And learn the Egyptian superpower: nokta, the joke. Egyptians have laughed their way through five millennia of everything. They're the funniest people in the region and they know it.

Every colour is someone's home. I print it the way memory keeps it: vintage-washed, distressed, made to order.

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P.S. Red for the struggle, white for the bloodless 1952 revolution, black for the past overcome, and Saladin's golden eagle standing guard. Five thousand years, one chest. Find your flag.