World War I was a period of disease, famine, and death for the Egyptian population. Between 1914 and 1918, there were over four times as many deaths in Egypt from infectious diseases as there were from military operations. In 1918, the death rate exceeded the birth rate for the first time in over fifty years. Military requisitions led to shortages in food and high inflation in the cost of basic staples. Nearly two percent of Egypt’s population died during the First World War. Despite the clear indication of a demographic crisis (if not catastrophe), this story appears in no histories of wartime Egypt, nor has it yet been recounted in the new histories that challenge the Egyptian official narrative that the 1919 Revolution was motivated by widespread commitment to the nationalist cause. The only study to previously address the topic was an exploratory 1992 article titled “Peasants in Revolt.” The article argues that “Egyptian peasant unrest had more to do with hunger, threatening starvation, apportioning the costs of war-induced inflation,” and concluded by suggesting there was much more work to be done. In this paper, I utilize British and Egyptian government documents, war diaries, and the press to show that food shortages were documented in Egypt as early as the summer of 1915; and that an increase in the mortality and morbidity of epidemic diseases that had otherwise been under control for decades can be seen as early as the end of 1914. By the end of 1916, the average Egyptian family was unable to feed itself adequately. I show that much of the population was starving in plain sight; able to eat, but provided with foodstuffs that failed to provide adequate nutrition. Government officials appear to have been unaware of the extent of the crisis and did not actively intervene. The story of a starving, sick population during the war is important in its own right, but I also believe that the demographic and health crises of wartime Egypt are an important part of the matrix of factors that led to widespread support for the 1919 uprising.