These were the Pharaonic Egyptians, who seem to have come from Babylonia and the coasts of southern Arabia.

Cities were built and kingdoms were founded on the banks of the Nile, and the older population was forced to become the serfs of the new-comers, to cultivate their fields, to confine the Nile within artificial boundaries, and to carry out those engineering works which have made the valley of the Nile what it is to-day.
The Pharaonic Egyptians are the Egyptians of history.

They were acquainted with the art of writing, they mummified their dead, and they possessed to a high degree the faculty of organisation.

The gods they worshipped were beneficent deities, forms of the Sun-god from whom their kings derived their descent.

It was a religion which easily passed into a sort of pantheistic monotheism in the more cultivated minds, and it was associated with a morality which is almost Christian in its character.