5 Pounds Egyptian Revolution

Issued to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1952 coup that deposed King Farouk and ended the Muhammad Ali dynasty's 150-year hold on Egypt, this piece was struck under the authority of the Central Bank at a moment when commemorative gold output from Cairo was still relatively modest. The revolution itself — engineered by the Free Officers Movement under Naguib and Nasser — transformed Egypt from a constitutional monarchy into a republic within a year of the coup, though the officers initially kept Farouk's infant son nominally on the throne for several months before abolishing the monarchy entirely in June 1953.