I went to school for history, earned my BA parlayed that into a job as a teacher then got an MA in education to keep my job. I'm willing to bet that many of us teach. The pay isn't great but it isn't horrible, and it gives me summers off so I have roughly three months each year to commit to research projects.

It may be different if you want to focus on writing history as a 'hobby' (like some politicians do/have done in the past) or for the wider public, but if you want to be a full-time historian as a career, then I'd say your first stop is an undergraduate degree and then PhD (possibly with an MA in between) in history. Archaeology is also another option, especially as you are interested in ancient Greece/Egypt, the major difference being your source material for your research (historians don't generally go searching for artefacts unless they are documents in the archives).

Career-wise, it is definitely possible to make a full-time career out of history. Mainly working as an academic in university (generally a mix of teaching and research), but also for archives/museums/historical institutions.

I am particularly interested in ancient civilizations such as Egypt and Greece.

I wrote about the career path for Egyptology in How difficult is it to become an Egyptologist, and does it require multiple degrees?

This is a very tough time to be considering making a career out of history (thinking here mostly of history - broadly defined - as an academic pursuit). Now, not all historians are academics, and not all historians have doctorates, but doctorate-based academic careers are what I'm most familiar with, so that's what I can speak to.

The history job market is currently in something of a freefall state in the US and UK (where I'm based). Most of the jobs that come up are short-term or medium-term temporary. Permanent jobs in academia are few and far between, and the competition is fierce when they do come up. There are all sorts of statistics about how many PhDs actually gain academic jobs, but one of the most recent ones I've heard of for the humanities in the UK is 4%. That makes for pretty grim and depressing reading. Even getting to a PhD is a huge commitment of time and effort, so you need to think very long and hard about whether that's a career path you wish to pursue.

Academic history is, of course, not the be all and end all. School teaching, curatorial work, the heritage sector, etc. are all areas where there are brilliant scholars at work. However, those aren't areas of expertise for me, so I wouldn't like to speak about them in any detail.