Ancient Egypt may have been, to paraphrase Herodotus, "the gift of the Nile," but Egypt's civilization was no less the product of her god incarnate, the pharaoh. 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--provide the unifying thread running through the fourth edition of this classic text. The late Cyril Aldred was Keeper of the Department of Art and Archaeology at the Royal Museum of Scotland, and served as Associate Curator of the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Aidan Dodson, Visiting Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Bristol, has completely revised this "masterpiece of compression" (Jacquetta Hawkes), carefully preserving Aldred's succinct and lucid style. Many significant and recent finds are investigated, and new thoughts on the first unification of Egypt, her early kings, and the Third Intermediate Period are included. The dating has been revised throughout, many new photographs have been incorporated, and a complete list of kings is included for the first time.