Indeed, right at the top of the article, it states they had to travel to Lebanon to get wood suitable for military ships. This sort of thing makes naval power costly, relative to having suitable trees growing right by your ports.

That said, Egypt has always been a major regional power. Why? Geography. It has the Nile delta, a great breadbasket. And it has control of one side of the Red Sea, the natural seagoing trade route between the Mediterranean basin and Asia. Egypt will always be important due to those two geographic features.

This particular mindset wasn't based on Jared Diamond, although he did work a related idea. For example, his observation that the geography of the Mediterranean allowed agricultural innovations from the middle east to spread across southern Europe and northern Africa (and the Mediterranean allowed for easy seagoing trade and exchange of ideas), while the north/south orientation of the Americas slowed the spread of technology there.

Tim Marshall's point in Prisoners of Geography is different. He argues that fundamental geographic features have large-scale impacts on area economies. For example, the east coast of South America is mostly cliffs, so there are few natural ports at all, and fewer large ones. Contrast this with the east coast of the US, which has incredible natural ports at Boston, New York, and Chesapeake Bay - sheltered and deep-water. Along the same lines, he compares the economic impact of rivers like the Mississippi, the Rhine, and the Yellow River to rivers that are just as large, but hard to navigate, or pass through lands not suitable for agriculture.

For a small scale comparison, think of the economy of the San Francisco Bay area, relative to, say, Big Sur.

I just finished Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall.