That is the sort of question any decent historian or archeologist ponder.

But I'll also say that it is more in popular science that Egypt is the greatest civilization of all time. That goes back to when the ancient Egyptian culture was rediscovered. It was the first to be studied scholarly to any degree which is why Egyptology was an entire field of study, but not Indus-Valley-Civilizationology

Absolutely. Egypt was only one of several powerful kingdoms of its time. We have many texts from the Hittite empire, Assyria, Mycenaean Greece, etc. referring to splendid furniture, jewelry, palaces, and so on, but they have survived only in rare instances (e.g. jewelry from the royal tombs of Ur and Nimrud and the furniture from the Midas mound at Gordion).

As Edward Chiera noted in They Wrote on Clay,

>In Egypt stone is plentiful, and the great pharaohs utilized it for temples and pyramid, imperishable testimonies to their names. Even had Egypt's history not been practically continuous, still no one could have failed to notice these reminders of the existence of a great civilization. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, stone hardly exists. Some sort of gypsum is found in the north, and this exclusively was used by the Assyrian kings in the decoration of their palaces. But this stone is of such poor quality as to be virtually soluble in water; any inscription or statue left exposed to the elements will promptly disintegrate. In the southern part of the land even gypsum is lacking, and for this reason the ancient Babylonians treasured what pieces of stones they could import from distant lands and used those pieces exclusively for the images of their gods and their most important records. For building materials they had to make the most of what was at hand, river clay...

>The walls exposed to the elements were protected by plaster of mud and straw, or sometimes with baked bricks set in bitumen. Courtyards were also paved with baked bricks, but the interior of the walls was a solid mass of sun-dried bricks. Building costs were thus cut considerably, and the construction remained solid so long as the roof stood and the facing continued in good condition. But, let the edifice be neglected for a number of years, and it would crumble into dust. When the central government became too weak or too poor to take proper care of the network of canals that irrigated the land, large tracts of fertile territory were converted into a desert almost overnight, and whole cities had to be abandoned. The roofs of the buildings caved in, and the core of the huge walls, no longer protected, was exposed to the rain. Water slowly worked in; the bricks began to swell up, and the walls to crack and fall. After a few rainy seasons, the upper part of the walls completely disintegrated and left merely a little mound of dirt to mark the site of a once splendid palace. All furniture and perishable objects that had not been taken away when the buildings were abandoned remained buried in the wet debris; with the passing of years they too disappeared and are now gone forever. We should have no idea of the magnificence of the ancient furnishings but for the fact that occasionally we find thrones, chairs, and tables sculptured on the reliefs which adorned the palaces…

One of the worst things an archeologist knows is that more is lost than is saved everywhere, always.

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As an example, there is a civilization in the South East Arabian peninsula during the Iron age. They leave basically no traces. We don't have them in the bronze age, in the copper age, in the stone age, and suddenly in the Iron age they work iron, except there is no iron locally. The Mesopotamian cultures talk about taxing them for their use of the rivers, and then they talk about them domesticating camels so they don't use the rivers. There is no clear hierarchy, they never become an empire, but all the empires around them talk about them being there. They left a few shards of writing, they left a string of villages along a wadi.

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There is a thousand years of prehistory there. 1000 summers and winters uninterrupted in this wadi, generations of people lived and died and we have 10 of their villages and 2 shards of their writing. We don't know their kings, or their gods, their food or their families, we don't even know what they called themselves. But for a thousand years they were there, and we only know for certain that we don't know anything.

I highly, highly recommend Tides of History podcast by Patrick Wyman. He has a long arc on the late Bronze Age, as well as a bunch of other looks into early historical states like Egypt. One interesting tidbit from the Bronze Age arc is the large number of advanced contemporary states in the Mediterranean / Near East world, of which Egypt was but one (but perhaps one of the most powerful and oldest).

Of course, there’s also China, who by end of the Mediterranean Bronze Age, was a series of massive, advanced states as well, and India, which I know less about.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Egypt the greatest ancient civilization, but during its very long peak, it appears to have been pretty incredible. But again, comparing with other kingdoms and entities can be difficult as there’s a bit less understood on them.

Could be, but I think we must remember that Egypt was "special" given its special status as a Roman province. It was the most reliable grain producer in the Meditteranean, and presumably that also afforded it a certain consistency when it came to urban infrastructure and development.

Egyptian history spans thousands of years and is now a modern country.

It stood the test of time evolving along the way but has always been known for its history even since the ancient Greeks. The ancient Romans visited the ruins of Egypt similar to people today visiting ruins in Rome.

The fact it stood so long as a population center throughout history allowed it to keep its historical reputation than say Babylon or Mesopotamia.

I don’t think you can actually say that when what we call Egypt today is the place where clocks was first made