Another characteristic of Egypt’s people is how young they
are—how many infants, children, and young adults there are
among the population. It is not a mistaken impression. More than
one-third—35 percent—of Egyptians are under the age of 15.
Finally, a visitor’s impression of Egypt’s population might
be one of surprise that so many people live in cities—Western-
ers might have had an image of Egyptians working the land
as they did in Biblical times. Recently, however, not only have
Egypt’s cities grown rapidly, but their proportion in the overall
population has also increased. In 2007, nearly half of Egyptians
were city dwellers (versus about 20 percent in 1910), so the
rural people are only a modest majority.
Egypt’s rural peasant farmers, called fellahin in Arabic, live
in some 4,000 villages in the Nile Valley and Nile Delta. The
typical village is a densely packed group of adobe (mud brick)
structures built in the midst of the green cultivated area. As in
ancient times, Egyptian peasants today build their cemeteries
on nearby desert margins, or on unproductive land near the
village. The quaint images of men and women in flowing robes
and children riding donkeys in these villages lead many outsid-
ers to speak of the timeless Egyptian village. But the villages