5 Pounds

The National Bank of Egypt was established in 1898 by a British-led consortium — not by the Egyptian government — and began issuing notes the following year. Its founding came during the period of British financial control following the debt crisis of the 1870s, which had ended with Egypt effectively under Anglo-French fiscal supervision. These early notes were therefore instruments of a privately chartered institution operating under British influence, not a sovereign central bank in any meaningful sense.

Bradbury Wilkinson's engraved work from this period is among the finest commercial banknote printing of the late Victorian era. The P#3 is rare in any grade; surviving examples from the 1899 date are seldom encountered outside major institutional collections.