Aldred Cyril. The Egyptians

Revised and Enlarged Edition. — New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985. — 216 p. — (Ancient Peoples and Places). — ISBN: 0-500-02104-X.Ancient Egypt may have been, in the words of a famous epigram, "the gift of the Nile," but the character of Egyptian civilization was no less the product of her god incarnate, the pharaoh. It is these twin themes - the overwhelming importance of the annual inundation of the Nile and the rise and fall over three thousand years of the power of the divine king - that provide the unifying thread running through this superbly written narrative.
Chapters setting out the chronology and rediscovery of ancient Egypt form the prelude to a journey down the Nile, where the remote past is made to seem compulsively present, from Nubia and Abu Simbel northwards via Thebes, Memphis, the pyramids and other ancient sites to the cities of the Delta. An analysis of the natural resources leads in to what is the core of the book, a panoramic survey of the progress of Egyptian civilization. Out of the waters of Chaos, as the ancient Egyptians saw it - out of the first Stone Age settlements, as we should now express it — the mighty pharaohs unified and developed the land: Menes, Djoser Kheops in the Old Kingdom, Amosis, Tuthmosis III, Ramesses II in the New Kingdom, and many lesser monarchs during more troubled times. It was an achievement that among other things produced the greatest art and architecture of the entire pre-classical world, an achievement that is magnificently illustrated in this book.
Jacquetta Hawkes called the first edition of The Egyptians a "masterpiece of compression." Without in any way losing the succinct and lucid qualities of the original, Cyril Aldred has entirely rewritten his text, thus providing for the student or traveller an indispensable and up-to-date guide to the world of the ancient Egyptians.The loss and recovery of pagan Egypt.
The ancient places.
The natural resources.
The settlement of Egypt.
Predynastic Egypt.
The Archaic Period.
The Pyramid Age of the Old Kingdom I.
The Pyramid Age of the Old Kingdom II.
The First Intermediate Period.
The Middle Kingdom.
The Second Intermediate Period.
The New Kingdom.
The Late Period.
Egyptian social groups.
Epilogue.