History of the Republic of Egypt
On 22–26 July 1952, the Free Officers, a group of disaffected officers in the Egyptian army founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and headed by General Muhammad Naguib, initiated the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 with the overthrowing King Farouk, whom the military blamed for Egypt's poor performance in the 1948 war with Israel and lack of progress in fighting poverty, disease, and illiteracy in Egypt. In the following two years, the Free Officers consolidated power, and, following a brief experiment with civilian rule, abrogated the 1953 constitution, and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953, Muhammad Naguib as Egypt's first President.
Pharaonism
For a while Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic. When the union was dissolved, Egypt continued to be known as the UAR until 1971, when Egypt adopted the current official name, the Arab Republic of Egypt. The Egyptians' attachment to Arabism, however, was particularly questioned after the 1967 Six-Day War. Thousands of Egyptians had lost their lives and the country became disillusioned with Pan-Arab politics. Nasser's successor Anwar Al Sadat, both through public policy and his peace initiative with Israel, revived an uncontested Egyptian orientation, unequivocally asserting that only Egypt and Egyptians were his responsibility. The terms "Arab," "Arabism," and "Arab unity," save for the new official name, became conspicuously absent. (See also Liberal age and Republic sections.) Sadat only engaged in Parhaonism for international consumption as when he arranged for the mummy of King Ramses the Great to go to Paris for restoration work in 1974, he insisted the French provide an honor guard at Charles de Gaulle airport to fire a 21 gun salute as befitting a head of state when the coffin containing his corpse touched French soil. Domestically, Pharaonism was discouraged under Sadat who closed the mummy room in the Egyptian Museum for offending Muslim sensibilities, through in private Sadat was said to remark that "Egyptian kings are not be made a spectacle of" suggesting a degree of respect for the ancient past. Pharaonism largely exists in Egypt today for the tourist industry, and most Egyptians do not deeply identify with ancient Egypt.