My suggestion, is to go the bookstore (or the library) and get yourself a number of coffee table books with lots of egyptian photos, and renderings of what the pyramids were like while they were still part of functioning temple complexes (as opposed to the pile of bricks they are now. Don't get me wrong they are still wonderfully impressive and fun to visit, but at one time they were much more.
Temple Karnak
Temple Luxor
Valley of the Kings
Valley of the Queens
Pyramids
Sphinx
If you wanted to make it political, I wouldn't sweat to much the different Egyptian gods I would show the incursion of a new faith with a radically different philosophy - I would pick something along the lines of Islam, not because I am a bigot (I live and work in the muslim world and I am really enjoying it), but because there is so much amazing imagery of mosques overlooking and built on top of ancient egyptian sites. And some of the Forts and Mosques, the focus on faith, and the radically different style make a nice juxtaposition and set up lots of room for intrigue without requiring overly detailed family histories.
For a feel for Egyptian magic, will The Mummy and the Mummy Returns with Brandon Frazier are both fun. There was also a cartoon series (giving away my cheesy vices) called Mummies Alive - the stories were weak - but some of the design work on magic and magic items and their adaption of Egyptian to fantasy stylings were actually pretty cool.
Of course all of this is based on the assumption is that you are thinking of an Egypt from the time of Pharoah's - there is lots of Egyptian history beyond that.
Also lots of room to incorporate military/economic threats from Greek/Roman civilization (or any other culture for that matter) as well as African empires (assuming you want to use an earthlike geography).
There's not much further you have to go than the Deities and Demigods book. It's got great sections on each of the classical mythologies from our world translated loosely into a cosmology appropriate to a D&D setting complete with gods, etc. It's come in very handy for me, and is a nice introductory reference work too since more hoary scholarly type sources aren't so willing to trim everything down into something that can be read in a easy to use little "god X is like this" column. It has Egyptian, Greek and Olympian as well as the gods of Greyhawk and some tenative pokes at helping DMs develop their own pantheons of gods. It's very nice for what you're looking for and it's an older book so you can probably pick it up cheap (they may even have it here for download, I haven't checked).
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You can also try the Encyclopedia Mythica website. It might not always be accurate, but there is a lot if information on a multitude of mythologies, including Egyptian.
I think there was also a Time-Life series of books on Egypt (I have the first book of the series somewhere). If that entire series is anything like Time-Life's other works, then it should be pretty good.
If you look for role-playing resources, consider Rolemaster Mythic Egypt or Gurps Egypt. I remember a Ravenloft adventure set in a quasi-egyptian setting, "Touch of Death".
If you look more for arabic themes, look into the Al-Qadim (it has hints to an ancient culture in the "Cities of Bone" Box), of course Gurps Arabia, perhaps the Vampire: Dark Ages sourcebook "Veil of Night", the adventure "Mysterious Ways" in Dungeon 86.
Call of Cthulhu should have plenty of egyptian material, just strip away the 20th century references.
And don´t forget to tell us what has come of it :-)
Stefan
Green Ronin has a product called Hamunaptra. I don't own it but looked through it at a Con. Seemed pretty cool. Egyptianized PC races and included Gnolls as a playable race.
My local game store owner (who can usually be trusted about such things - he takes back anything someone buys they don't like, so he doesn't encourage sales of products he's not personally happy with) highly recommends the green ronin mythic vistas books, especially hamunaptra. Actually most everything green ronin is excellent (except their item series, which I didn't like).
- Ashavan
Two things:
First, as a tip to adapting a real life culture to the RPG world, do not be afraid to drastically alter things. Some adapters try to be so authentic to the source that the game comes across as stale or boring, because nothings new. Be sure to add your own flavor.
Second, there is a 2nd ed book for Forgotten Realms, "Old Empires" which may be good if you can get it, for what you want to do.
