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5 Piastres
| Issuer | Egyptian Government |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 Piastres (قرش) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Violet on orange-yellow underprint. The note is laid out in a horizontal format with the title "EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT CURRENCY NOTE" arched across the top within a decorative guilloche border. A central lotus flower vignette flanked by bilateral Arabic and English bilingual text panels occupies the middle field, with the denomination "FIVE PIASTRES" set within a framed cartouche. The date "27th May 1917" appears below the denomination panel, with a manuscript signature of the Minister of Finance and a printed serial number at lower left. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Violet. The reverse is dominated by a central oval vignette of the Island of Philae with its ancient temple complex reflected in the Nile waters, a traditional felucca sailing boat in the foreground at right. The oval vignette is framed by an ornate engine-turned border of acanthus scroll and foliate guilloche work, with the numeral "5" positioned in each of the four corners within decorative cartouches. |
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| Comments |
Egypt in 1917 was under British occupation, and these government treasury notes — not central bank issues — were a direct administrative tool of that arrangement. The Egyptian Government series ran alongside British military currency in a market where confidence in paper was fragile and coin hoarding was widespread, particularly in wartime.
Barclay & Fry Ltd, a London security printer, handled the physical production. The watermark is the primary anti-counterfeiting measure — relatively modest for the period, but consistent with wartime economies in print specification.
P#158 belongs to a series that continued largely unchanged in format through the early 1920s, outlasting the political circumstances that originally prompted it.