Pictured: This issue cover was published just 19 days after Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal on July 26. It features an Egyptian actress posed against the vast Mediterranean Sea.

Furthermore, textual evidence in this issue includes serialized memoirs of cinema star Faten Hamama. This cover embodies how nationalization made itself visible to the state’s citizenry, who were primary consumers of popular media forms. The Mediterranean (and the Nile) was the forefront of Egypt’s national identity.

Dated: August 14, 1956

Alexandria, North Africa, Egypt

The Sea