After pushing its economy to the brink, Egypt gets a bail-out

IN ANCIENT times, the pharaohs knew their survival might depend on the annual flooding of the Nile. Without its deluge of rich black silt, crops could not be sown, and hungry people tended to turn on their leaders. Times have changed, but Egypt’s modern-day pharaoh still looks elsewhere to sustain his rule: not south, to the headwaters of the Nile, but east, to the oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf.