In April 1936, the leading Egyptian cultural magazine, al-Hilal, devoted an entire issue to al-Shabab, the youth, on the grounds that “at the present time youth have an influence in both the political and social spheres; on their shoulders now rests the responsibilities for new revivals in the East and West.” As scholars have previously noted, in interwar Egypt a “myth of youth” emerged stressing the redeeming power of a new, younger generation of Egyptians possessing vitality and promise to deliver independence and modernity to the nation. Likewise, historiography informs us that this period’s political factionalism and fragmentation incorporated students into the political fold, eventually leading to violent clashes (e.g. the student uprising of 1935-36, the “shirt” street clashes of 1937, the student uprising of 1946) that demonstrated the dynamic force of students. This paper examines representations of youth in Egypt, providing a more nuanced analysis of the changing conceptions of youth which contributed to the development of youth’s symbolic political and cultural capital in public debate and imagery following the declaration of Egypt’s nominal independence in 1922 to the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. While acknowledging the general notion of “youth” as a socially and culturally determined category, a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood that has shifted in modern history as a result of changing local and global processes, I position the specific shifts and diverse conceptions of imagined youth within the Egyptian historical context. Thus, the struggle to define an Egyptian national identity, the reality of the era’s political fragmentation and cultural contests mirrored the challenges to define the characteristics of an idealized Egyptian youth. Utilizing sources from Egyptian mainstream media, the divisive political press, and emerging children’s periodicals, I scrutinize these conceptions and images to reveal the contentious fault lines of this signal issue within the debates to define not only an essential entity within Egypt’s political and cultural community, but also Egypt’s modernity and independence.