President Hosny Mubarak, 81, returned to Egypt on Saturday, three weeks after his gall bladder was removed in Germany, state television reported.
Mubarak's operation and three-week recovery have put a finer point on the decades-old question of who might follow the president, who, in his 29 years in power, has never appointed a vice-president, dpa reported.
Egypt's most senior political, military and religious officials met the president, who traveled with his wife and both his sons, at the airport in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh on Saturday evening.
"The president has fully recovered from the effects of the successful surgical intervention conducted on him exactly three weeks ago," Mubarak's doctors said in a statement distributed by the Egyptian Ministry of Information earlier Saturday.
"I have recommended, however, that the president continue his convalescence back home during the coming two weeks before he gradually returns to his full and normal activities," Markus Buechler, of Heidelberg University Hospital, said.
Mubarak's gall bladder and a polyp in the small intestine were removed on March 6 after he was admitted with a diagnosis of serious inflammation of the gall bladder.
His return may calm Egyptian concerns about the president's health and possible successor.
Two weeks ago, the Egyptian stock exchange dropped sharply, reportedly on rumours about the president's condition, only recovering lost ground after the government broadcast footage of the president recuperating in Germany.