The Unknown Soldier Memorial in Cairo is a pyramid in shape monument in Nasr City. President Anwar Sadat ordered its construction in 1974. In the honor of Egyptians and Arabs who lost their lives in the 1973 October War. Inaugurated in October 1975. The site also chosen for the president’s tomb after his assassination in October 1981.

The monument is made of concrete and resembles a hollow pyramid, with a height of 25 meters, and a base width of 14.3 meters. The four pillars are 1.9 meters thick, and are inscribed with 71 symbolic names. At the center of the base is a solid basalt cube representing the soldier’s tomb. The artist Sami Rafi designed it , a professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo who obtained his PhD from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Vienna. A small memorial to those who died in the 1973 war is present in the 6th of October Panorama.

Anwar Sadat

Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. Sadat was a senior member of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. In fact, he is a close confidant of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, under whom he served as Vice President twice and whom he succeeded as president in 1970. In 1978, Sadat and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, signed a peace treaty in cooperation with United States President Jimmy Carter. They recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his eleven years as president, he changed Egypt’s trajectory. Departing from many of the political and economic tenets of Nasserism, re-instituting a multi-party system. He launched the Infitah economic policy. As President. He led Egypt in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to regain Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Israel had occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967, making him a hero in Egypt. Afterwards, he engaged in negotiations with Israel, culminating in the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Therfore, this won him and Menachem Begin the Nobel Peace Prize. Making Sadat the first Muslim Nobel laureate.

His refusal to reconcile with them over the Palestinian issue resulted in Egypt suspended from the Arab League. The peace treaty was also one of the primary factors that led to his assassination; on 6 October 1981, militants led by Khalid Islambouli opened fire on Sadat with automatic rifles during the 6 October parade in Cairo, killing him.