Egypt: A Very Short History — Ian Shaw

Shaw compresses several thousand years of Egyptian history into a tight account that is as much about how we know what we know as about the pharaohs themselves. The book is structured to show how each period — Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, Late Period — raises its own distinct historical problems, and how archaeology, inscriptions, and the Greek and Roman sources offer different and sometimes contradictory evidence. A rigorous introduction that does not condescend.