School Textbooks and Assembling the Puzzle of the Past in Revolutionary Egypt

The leaders of Egypt’s coup d’e´tat (23 July 1952) perceived state schools to be central in establishing and maintaining the new revolutionary political order. At the regime’s zenith (1955–67), these revolutionaries attached considerable importance to the curricula as a primary means of disseminating the values, symbols and goals of the July Revolution. History, geography, civics, religious studies, literature and writing lessons were critical in this endeavour to form or more accurately inform the pupils’ historical, and hence, political consciousness.