The register · Africa

What is the average penis size in Egypt?

Somewhere between 12.9 and 13.84 cm stretched, depending on which of three clinical studies you read. The map prints 15.7 cm. The only Egyptian measurement that comes close to it is 15.0 cm, from a control group of 59 men, measured with the ruler pressed through the fat pad to the pubic bone.

A B C D
What the internet claims

15.7 cm

labelled erect

The compilation behind the viral maps D

What was measured

13.84 cm

stretched, 2,000 men

Shalaby et al., Andrologia, 2015

The claim runs 1.86 cm above the measurement, and the two do not measure the same thing: the claim says erect, the study measured stretched. There is no accepted way to convert between them.

What was actually measured in Egypt?

Egypt is unusually well studied for this register, and every study disagrees with the claim. Kamel 2009 measured 949 normal men at 12.9 cm stretched. Shalaby 2015 measured 2,000 men at 13.84 cm stretched, with a standard deviation of 1.35, the tightest in the whole world literature. Salama 2016 measured a control group of 59 men erect, twice: 13.0 cm from the skin, 15.0 cm pressed to the bone.

That last pair is the most useful thing on this page. The same 59 men, the same erections, two centimetres apart, and the only difference is how hard the ruler was pushed. It is one of only two studies anywhere that measured both ways in the same men, and it is the reason this site can now say bone-pressing adds 1.8–2.0 cm with a citation instead of an assertion.

Which makes the Egyptian claim legible. Fifteen point seven is not a measurement of Egyptian men. It is roughly the bone-pressed figure from the smallest Egyptian study, promoted to a national average, while the two studies with 2,949 men between them are ignored. That is not sampling error. That is picking the largest available number.

Every study located for Egypt

More than one measurement exists here, and they disagree. All of them, in the order they were published.

Study Year n Figure (cm) Measure What it tells you
Kamel et al., J Sex Med 2009 949 12.90 stretched Normal men, SD 1.9 cm. Nearly a full centimetre below Shalaby, in the same country, on the same measure.
Salama, Am J Mens Health 2016 59 13.00 erect, not bone-pressed (15.0 cm bone-pressed) The control group of a case-control study. The same men measured both ways, 2.0 cm apart.

How does that compare with the rest of the world?

The claim puts Egypt 17th of 119 countries on the ranked list. Here is that number set against the figures that come with a method attached.

Figure cm What it is
The claim for Egypt 15.70 Labelled erect. No method, no sample size, no reference.
Shalaby et al., Andrologia 13.84 stretched, 2,000 men, 2015. The best located measurement in Egypt.
Clinically measured worldwide 13.12 Erect, 15,521 men. Veale 2015, the pooled clinical figure.
Pooled worldwide 13.93 Erect, 55,761 men. Belladelli 2023, 75 studies.
Pooled for Africa 14.88 Erect, 95 % confidence interval 12.50–17.26 cm . Belladelli 2023.

That last interval is 4.76 cm wide, for a whole continent, from the largest meta-analysis there is. The claimed map it sits under spreads all 119 countries across 7.9 cm and prints every country to one decimal place. Read those two sentences together and you have the entire problem with penis size by country.

How many men does the claim cover?

2,000 measured → 36,000,000 described

2,000 men in Egypt appear in the studies this register could locate. The claimed figure is applied to roughly 36,000,000 adult men: one measured man for every 18,000.

Where would you land in Egypt?

Against the claimed figure, because that is the number people mean when they ask. It is the weaker of the two numbers above, and the calculator says so. Everything is computed in your browser and nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere.

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13.6 cm

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1,350,250,000men smaller
1,350,240,000men larger

50 of 100 men worldwide are larger than you.

Estimated from the claimed world mean of 13.6 cm across ≈ 2,700,490,000 adult men in 119 countries. You beat the claimed mean in 31 of them. The claims are the internet's, not ours; we are grading them one by one. See the audit.

What should you take from this?

Egypt has more clinician-measured men behind it than almost any country here, and its claimed figure ignores all of them in favour of the single highest number in the national literature. Read 12.9 to 13.84 cm stretched and treat 15.7 as what it is.

The other half of the Salama paper is worth more than the measurements. Of 239 Egyptian men who came to a clinic convinced their penis was too small, not one had a flaccid length under 4 cm or an erect length under 7 cm. Every one of them was inside the normal range. If that describes why you are reading this, start here instead.

Nearby in the register

The nearest countries with an entry of their own here.

Nearer still, and with nothing to show: Syria, Sudan, Libya. Those countries carry a claimed figure on every map and no located study behind it, so they have no page here. The method page lists all of them.

Sources for this page

  1. Shalaby et al., Andrologia, 2015, n = 2,000. Clinician-measured, stretched. Study
  2. Kamel et al., J Sex Med, 2009, n = 949. Stretched. Study
  3. Salama, Am J Mens Health, 2016, n = 59. Erect, not bone-pressed (15.0 cm bone-pressed). Study
  4. Veale D et al. Am I normal? BJU International 2015; 115(6): 978–986. The pooled clinical figures used throughout this site.
  5. Belladelli F et al. Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length. World J Mens Health 2023; 41(4). The regional pooled figures and confidence intervals.

The full reference list, the grading scheme and all 119 claims are on the method and sources page.

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