I was talking to a co-worker today about ancient civilizations such as Rome and the Mongol empire. We got on the subject of ancient Egypt and neither of us knew much about it. So it's a subject I'd like to really explore. Do y'all have any good recommendations to start me off on this new path of discovery?
The ancient Egypt section of the AskHistorians reading list is a good place to begin. I always recommend Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt and Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz to people looking for introductions to ancient Egypt; they're unusually well-written and fairly reliable.
For better or worse, most histories of Egypt focus almost exclusively on political history. Ancient Egypt: A Social History by Trigger, et al. (1983) is therefore still widely cited but badly in need of revision. Barry Kemp's Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization is excellent but a fairly dense read, and it only covers Egyptian history and archaeology through the New Kingdom.
Be sure to check out the excellent History of Egypt podcast. It has only reached the end of the Amarna period (ca. 1330 BCE), so there is still a long way to go.