As you can see in this Ancient Egypt Map, the country has two sea coasts. The North coast overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the East coast overlooking the Red Sea.
The Nile river splits the country in half, with almost all the inhabitants residing in cities or towns on the Nile's shores. As we already know, the ancient Egyptians relied fully on the Nile's yearly flooding to fertilize the soil...
The two sides of the Nile used to have different functions in ancient Egypt. The West was the land of the dead, so to speak, where the tombs and funerary temples would reside. The East would be the land of living, where homes and villages were, plus the cult temples of the gods.
Lower Egypt comprises of the northern part of the country, while Upper Egypt comprises of the southern part.
Some of the most important sites of ancient Lower Egypt:
Some of the most important sites of ancient Upper Egypt:
You will also notice that many of the cities have Greek names. These names are still in use today, but most of them now also have Arabic counterparts.
For example - I myself live in a city called Heliopolis (not the ancient one), which is considered to be part of greater Cairo, but this city also has the Arabic name of "Misr Al Jadeeda"...
...the Greek name means "City of the Sun", while the Arabic name means "New Egypt".
While the ancient city of Heliopolis (close to the one where I live) is now called "Ain Shams" meaning Eye of the Sun in Arabic.
In fact, Egypt itself has many different names. There's of course "Egypt", which in Arabic (the national language of the country) is "Misr". As you know, the name of ancient Egypt is "Kemet" which means the black land.
It can get kind of confusing...
But not to worry, if you're ever visiting the country almost everyone knows all the names of all the different cities.
For more on Egypt's name, click here.
This ancient Egypt map does not do justice to ancient Nubia, which is also important in relation to ancient Egyptian history. Nubia itself is so vast with many histories that it deserves a whole section on its own.