5 Pounds National Bank of Egypt 100th Anniversary

The National Bank of Egypt was founded in 1898 under a royal decree granted by Khedive Abbas II, established not as a central bank but as a private institution with British backing — the Bank of England's own Alfred Milner was instrumental in shaping its charter. For its first decades it functioned as both a commercial bank and de facto currency authority, issuing banknotes backed by gold at a time when Egypt was nominally Ottoman but practically under British financial administration.

Egypt didn't establish a true central bank until 1961, when Nasser nationalized the NBE and split its functions.