But, like the dinosaurs, the Egyptians had a good run. Their kingdom and religion lasted more than twice as long as Christianity's been around (4500 years vs. 2000 years). For their time, the Egyptians were extremely successful; it would be interesting to see if Christianity will be as successful (I believe it will, as it has already "speciated" into nearly 25,000 competing denominations -- one of them or its descendents is bound to survive the next 2500 years).
That turns out to be not the case. Aside from Gunnar Heinsohn's writings, the two books I advise everybody interested in things Egyptian to get hold of are Emmet J. Sweeney's "Pyramid Age" and "Genesis of Israel and Egypt".
It turns out there is no realistic med-basin history going back more than about 3000 years starting from now. The pyramids were built somewhere around 800 - 900 BC.
Paraphrase from Keith Preston