It had been said that you can't study Egyptian history without looking at the bible, and that you can't study the Bible without looking at Egyptian history - the two are just far too intertwined to be able to segregate the two.  Stretching back into the very beginnings of the Bible, Egypt plays a prominent part in many of the more familiar stories of the Old Testament.  I will look at this working back from today, which also means working backwards through the Bible.

2 Chronicles 12

Here we are told about one Pharaoh Shishak entering unto Jerusalem and pillaging the treasures of the city - including the 'Arc of the Covenant'.  This event is pinned firmly at 925 BC, and is the last firm date we have linking Egypt with the outside world.

According to the traditional Egyptian chronology this Pharaoh Shishak was Shoshenq I of the 22nd Dynasty.  This is based upon an inscription on Shoshenq's temple stating the enemies defeated by the Pharaoh, which was originally read as "Kingdom of Judah".  However, in 1888, several years after the original translation, it was discovered that this was in fact and error and the inscription actually reads "Monument of the King".  Quite confusingly, however, when the error was discovered, the now false assertion that Shoshenq was Shishak was not revoked - and to this day main-stream Egyptologist have maintained that this interpretation is accurate.

In recent years a number of scholars have began to question this, and perhaps the most significant of this is one David Rohl.  Rohl claims that Shishak was rather Pharaoh Ramses the Great of the 19th Dynasty, basing this upon a number of archaeological facts:

• The short form of the name Ramses (i.e. something like Bob for Robert in modern English) can be transliterated as Shisha.  The writers of the Bible often manipulated names for ironic effect, and considering that the name Shishak translates to 'one who crushes under foot' - a perfect description of the Pharaoh who ransacked Jerusalem.
• At the Ramusseum at Thebes there is an inscription which states that Ramses plundered a city called 'Shalem' - a possible abbreviation for Jerusalem.#
• And of course Ramses would have been more able to muster a force capable of plundering a city, considering that during the time of Shoshenq Egypt was in internal turmoil.

If Rohl's interpretation were accurate, however, it would cause problems with the standard interpretation for the exodus - which is generally pinned-down as being during Ramses reign.

Exodus

Perhaps the most famous of stories relating to Egypt in the Bible is that of Moses and the exodus out of Egypt.  The standard chronology assumes that Moses and Ramses II were contemporaries, and if so would have be raised as brothers in the Egyptian court.  Certainly having Ramses as the Pharaoh of the exodus would fit with fact to some degree - Ramses's first born son certainly pre-deceased him.  However, Ramses's body has been recovered and sits proudly in a back room in the Cairo Museum - so he certainly never met the fate of the Red Sea.  However, if Rohl is correct in asserting that Ramses was the Pharaoh Shishak, then it would be virtually impossible for him also to be the exodus Pharaoh considering the years in which events were happening.

Perhaps a better idea may be that the exodus equates to what the Egyptian would have known as the 'Expulsion of the Hyksos'.  The Hyksos were a Semitic people who conquered Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.  Certainly holes exist in stories regarding the Hyksos, and really only the Egyptian side of the situation exists.  Potentially the Hyksos and the people of Moses could have been one and the same, but sadly the archaeological evidence is simply not there to back up the hypothesis at this time.

Genesis 39

Of course Moses's people would have had to enter Egypt at some stage, and this brings us to the story of Joseph.  Now the bible speaks of Joseph interpreting a dream regarding seven years of famine.  Interestingly there is an Egyptian inscription that speaks of a seven years famine during the reign of Pharaoh Djoser, known as the Famine Stele:

                "...In a period of seven years, Grain was scant, Kernels were dried up..."

Admittedly the stele itself is a forgery dating from the reign of Pharaoh Ptolemy V, but for it to serve any purpose for the forgers it must have held some basis in reality.  Perhaps then this famine is the same famine which Joseph had interpreted.

Genesis 6-8

But now we get into the realm of Egyptian mythology.  While the story of Noah does not specifically mention Egypt, the idea of a great global flood corresponds nicely with the Egyptian creation story - which speaks of a world covered by water, from which emerged a primordial mound upon which a lotus flower grew and from this lotus Re emerged.  Perhaps this figuratively speaks of the receding of the flood waters, the growth of life and the first dawn on this recovered land?