5 Piastres

The Egyptian Government Currency Notes of this period existed specifically to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of small-denomination coins from circulation — metal was a war material, and by 1940 the demands on copper and nickel made coin production a low priority. The Survey of Egypt, a cartographic and scientific institution, had been pressed into banknote production decades earlier and by this point was a reasonably accomplished security printer despite its unusual institutional origins.

P#180A is distinguished from the closely related P#180 by its signature combination — a detail that matters disproportionately given how similar these wartime small notes appear on cursory inspection.