Cleopatra was 17 or 18 when she became the queen of Egypt. She was far from beautiful, despite her glamorous image today. She is depicted on ancient coins with a long hooked nose and masculine features. Yet she was clearly a very seductive woman. She had an enchantingly musical voice and exuded charisma. She was also highly intelligent. She spoke nine languages (she was the first Ptolemy pharaoh who could actually speak Egyptian!) and proved to be a shrewd politician.
The death mask of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun is made of gold inlaid with colored glass and semiprecious stone. The mask comes from the innermost mummy case in the pharaoh's tomb, and stands 54 cm (21 in) high and weighs around 11kg. The pharaoh is portrayed in a classical manner, with a ceremonial beard, a broad collar formed of twelve concentric rows consisting of inlays of turquoise, lapis lazuli, cornelian and amazonite. The traditional nemes head-dress has yellow stripes of solid gold broken by bands of glass paste, coloured dark blue. On the forehead of the mask are a royal uraeus and a vulture's head, symbols of the two tutelary deities of Lower and Upper Egypt: Wadjet and Nekhbet. Above his perfect golden cheeks, Tutankhamen has blue petals of lapis lazuli in imitation of the kohl make-up he would have worn in life.
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King Farouk the First of Egypt, who reigned from 1936 until 1952, was a prolific collector. His taste for the rare and unusual was the catalyst for his assemblage of a diverse collection of items from around the world, even including some unsavory "collectibles." His coin collection included an estimated 8,500 gold coins and medals. King Farouk made most of his coin purchases in the 1940s, in an era when a numismatic dollar (and an Egyptian pound) went a long way.
Several American dealers supplied the king with coins, but they soon discovered that a downside to selling to him was that it usually took a long time to receive payment, especially if the invoice totaled more than $10,000. The larger invoices had to be routed to the Egyptian treasury, significantly increasing the time it took for the payment to be received, whereas the king had the authority to authorize payment of the smaller invoices. Not surprisingly, the American dealers soon learned to limit the invoices to less than $10,000. When all was said and done, King Farouk had amassed one of the largest, most important collections of coins in the history of numismatics.
The King Farouk Auction: A Numismatic Legend
After the Egyptian military forced King Farouk to flee the country in 1952, the American coin dealers had a great interest in what was to become of the Farouk Collection. Abe Kosoff goes into great detail in his book concerning the pre-sale uncertainty and negotiations that took place. Eventually the Egyptian government established a sale date and the London firm of Baldwin & Co. was hired to describe the coins, with Sotheby & Co. publishing the catalog. The coins and medals volume was one of a set of Sotheby catalogs entitled The Palace Collections of Egypt , which offered several categories of the king's collectibles, but did not mention King Farouk by name.
Because Fred Baldwin had to catalog the coins in Cairo, under military guard, and in a short period of time, it was not possible to do the great collection justice. Due to its sheer size, most of the coins were sold in large lots (often with fifteen or twenty coins per lot), sorted by denomination, with a variety of dates and mintmarks. Thus, most lots had a combination of rare and common coins.
A number of well-known American dealers and collectors attended the sale in Cairo. Dealers in attendance included Abe Kosoff, Sol Kaplan, Bob Schermerhorn, James Randall, Paul Wittlin, and Hans Schulman. Prominent collectors included John J. Pittman, Gaston DiBello, and Ambassador & Mrs. R. Henry Norweb.
A number of factors prevented the coins from reaching their optimum value at the auction. These included the remote location, the uncertain financial arrangements, the political instability, the large lots, and the awkward manner in which the coins were presented for lot viewing. Collectors such as John J. Pittman realized the true opportunity to acquire important pieces at "fire sale" prices and made the most of it. Mr. Pittman reportedly took out a second mortgage on his residence to finance the trip and his purchases, which turned out to be among the most significant of his numismatic career.
The sale was complicated by the fact that King Farouk had outstanding bills in excess of $300,000 from dealer Hans Schulman. After much uncertainty and following negotiations with the Egyptian government, an arrangement was made whereby Mr. Schulman was issued a credit in the amount of the due bills, against which auction purchases could be made. In order to recover his financial interest, Mr. Schulman became a major buyer at the auction, often allowing other dealers to obtain coins from his repurchased lots.
After reading about the "cloak and dagger" surrounding the King Farouk auction, I was fascinated!I wanted to acquire a King Farouk piece that would fit my specialty, Dahlonega gold coins.
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Since the beginning of the circulation of silver and gold coins in Egypt and until 1834, no specified monetary unit existed to serve as a basis for the monetary system in Egypt. Only a few of the coins were minted locally. In 1834, a Decree was promulgated providing for issuing an Egyptian currency based on a bimetallic base. By virtue of this Decree the minting of coins in the form of gold and silver riyals was monopolized by the government. In 1836 the Egyptian pound was minted and put into circulation.
Because Egyptian mints were insufficient to satisfy the requirements of large transactions as well as foreign trade, and because of the use of foreign coins for this purpose, legal exchange rates were fixed by force of law for important foreign currencies which became acceptable in the settlement of internal transactions. Fluctuations in the value of silver in addition to the adoption of the gold standard by most of the countries trading with Egypt, particularly the United Kingdom, led to the application of the gold standard, on a de facto basis, after almost thirty years of a bimetallic standard.
Following the financial crisis resulting from the accumulation of Egypt's external debt, the Monetary Reform Law was issued in 1885. By virtue of this Law, the gold standard became the basis for the Egyptian monetary system, and the country had a unified currency, the Egyptian gold pound. Thus, the bimetallic standard was officially abandoned.
Owing to the insufficiency of minted new gold pounds, it was permitted to use some foreign gold coins, particularly the Sterling pound, at fixed legal rates. While the Egyptian gold pound was still deemed a legal tender, the Sterling gold pound, which was valued at more than its gold content compared to other foreign gold coins, remained the main medium of exchange, and the monetary system was no longer based on the ordinary gold standard but on the Sterling gold standard.
Gold coins remained the medium of exchange until 1898 when the National Bank of Egypt was established and was granted, by the government, the privilege to issue Egyptian banknotes, payable in gold for a period of 50 years. The National Bank of Egypt started issuing banknotes for the first time on the 3rd of April 1899.
Consequently, the currency circulated in Egypt consisted of gold Sterling pounds and Egyptian banknotes convertible into gold. This situation continued up to 2/8/1914 when a special Decree was issued making Egyptian banknotes a legal tender and suspending their convertibility into gold. Thus, the Egyptian pound banknote became the basic currency unit, and the base of the Egyptian monetary system was changed to fiduciary paper money standard. Accordingly, gold coins were no longer used in circulation, with the result that the volume of note issue increased from LE 11.6 million at the end of 1915 to LE 3557.0 million at the end of 1980, and further to LE 38320.0 million at the end of 1999. In 1930, for the first time in the history of Egyptian banknotes, a watermark was used in issued banknotes. This was followed, towards the end of 1968, by using a metallic thread (in notes issued by the Central Bank of Egypt) as a guarantee against counterfeit instead of dependence on complexity of colors .Other features against counterfeit were found in the detailed specifications of each currency. Holograms are currently added to large denomination notes.
On the 19th of July 1960, Law No.250 was promulgated. It was amended in November of the same year by Law No.277 with respect to the Central Bank of Egypt and the National Bank of Egypt. The Law provided for the establishment of the Central Bank of Egypt conferring upon the CBE the right of issuing Egyptian banknotes. Several changes were introduced with respect to the watermark, the designs shown on the notes and the colors.
The efforts of the Central Bank of Egypt in the field of note issue were culminated in the establishment of a printing plant for banknotes instead of printing them abroad. The plant's production of banknotes in different denominations started in December 1968. The Bank also served some Arab central banks in printing their banknotes.
In view of the increasing need of banknotes to facilitate transactions resulting from the growth of economic activity, following the introduction of the open-door policy, the Central Bank of Egypt issued notes of large denominations (20,50,100).It lanched the denomination of 20 pounds in May 1977 and 100 pounds in May 1979 and 50 pounds in March 1993. .
Note Issue and Cover : 1990-2004
1-The period 1990 -2004 witnessed large and continuous increases in note issue compared with previous periods. The average rate of increase during that period stood at 11.7%.
2- Note issue cover is currently composed of gold and Egyptian treasury notes. The relative importance of such components as at end of June 2004 was as follows: 7.4% gold, and 92.6% treasury notes.
3- The proportional distribution of note issue by denomination as at end of June 2004 was as follows: 30.9% of one hundred pounds, 38.0% of fifty pounds , 18.4% of twenty pounds, 9.2% of ten pounds, 2.1% of five pounds ,0.9% of one pound, 0.3% of fifty piasters and 0.2% of twenty five piasters .
"According to Sotheby's Web site, early in 1944 -- prior the US government's discovery of the missing 1933 Double Eagle -- the Royal Legation of Egypt presented the coin to the Treasury Department, seeking a licence to export tit to Egypt to add to Farouk's collection. The issuers of the export licence required for virtually all gold coins, in force under the extensive gold restrictions in effect since March 1933, did not recognise the significance of an unissued 1933 coin, and the Treasury Department inadvertently issued the export licence.
In 1954 the Double Eagle was put up for sale with other valuables in King Farouk's private collection. Sotheby's, acting on behalf of the new Republic of Egypt, was in charge of selling the astonishing collection assembled by the dethroned monarch, who was one of the most enthusiastic coin collectors of all time. The sale of his collection of more than 8,500 gold coins took nine days. During the auction the US Treasury Department requested that the Double Eagle be withdrawn from sale. This was done, but afterwards it disappeared under mysterious circumstances and nothing was heard of it for nearly half a century.
In 1996 Secret Service agents posing as buyers set up a sting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York and managed to seize the coin from two dealers, one of them British, who had apparently been attempting to sell it. A five-year legal battle ensued, as a result of which a singular settlement was made between the American government and the British dealer under which the coin was officially released to the latter's private ownership. Thus was based on the understanding that it was previously owned by King Farouk and officially recognised as US coinage.
Now that Egypt has been unable to retrieve the coin its new, unnamed owner will be given an official Certificate of Transfer which makes it legally his. The substantial sale price will be divided equally between the British dealer and the US Treasury's General Fund. "
This guy is King Farouk (AH 1355-1372/1936-1952 AD), the last King of Egypt and one of the great coin collectors of the world. The coin is; KM# 367 10 PIASTRES, Silver
The hat is called a "Tarboosh", men used to wear it at that time since Egypt was semi-indipendent dynasty from the Turkish rule and this is a Turkish Custum
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