<p>The influence of classics is evident in the development of Western-European conceptualizations of the Egyptian landscape throughout centuries. The many tropes about the fertility and prosperity of Egypt, as well as the centrality of the water element, that recur in the Western historiographical tradition derive from, or represent variations on, classical stereotypes. In this article, I propose to analyze some snapshots in the long history of Western-European conceptualizations of Egypt from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The paper is divided into five sections, corresponding to the five periods over which Western views of the Egyptian landscape developed: between the Renaissance and the early eighteenth century; between the mid-eighteenth century and Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (1798–1801); between the early nineteenth century and the British occupation of Egypt in 1882; the British colonial period up to its end in 1952; and the period after the 1952 Revolution.</p>