Al-Ahram (; The Pyramids), founded on 5 August 1875, is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, and the second oldest after al-Waqa'i`al-Masriya (The Egyptian Events, founded 1828). It is majority owned by the Egyptian government, and is considered a newspaper of record for Egypt. Given the many varieties of Arabic language, Al-Ahram is widely considered an influential source of writing style in Arabic. In 1950, the Middle East Institute described Al-Ahram as being to the Arabic-reading public within its area of distribution, "What The Times is to Englishmen and The New York Times to Americans"; however, it has often been accused of heavy influence and censorship by the Egyptian government. In addition to the main edition published in Egypt, the paper publishes two other Arabic-language editions, one geared to the Arab world and the other aimed at an international audience, as well as editions in English and French. History Al-Ahram was founded in Alexandria in 1875 by two Lebanese Melkite Christian brothers, and Saleem Takla. It began as a weekly newspaper published every Saturday. Its first issue appeared on 5 August 1876. The paper was relaunched as a daily newspaper in January 1881. Its headquarters was in Alexandria until November 1899 when it was moved to Cairo. Initially the Cairo and Alexandria editions remained separate but later there became only one out of the new headquarters. The newspaper was distributed in Egypt and the Levant. The religious innovators Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani were early writers of the newspaper. Upon the death of Beshara Takla, Daud Barakat, a Lebanese journalist, was named editor of the daily in 1901. In the early 1920s Muhib Al Din Al Khatib, a Syrian journalist, served as the editor of the paper. Under Heikal President Gamal Abdel Nasser made his friend Mohamed Hassanein Heikal editor-in-chief of al-Ahram in 1957, and the paper gained semi-official status. On 24 May 1960, it was nationalized when Nasser passed a law eliminating the ownership of private newspapers. Under Nasser, al-Ahram became an internationally respected paper. It moved to a new headquarters in Bulaq in the 1960s. Heikal was known for high standard of production quality and contacted Linotype in 1965 seeking to acquire state-of-the-art Elektron linecastes. The circulation of the paper was between 45,000 and 50,000 copies in 1937 whereas it was 90,000 copies in 1947. In 1976 the paper had a circulation of 520,000 copies, making