I NOSTRI AVI

They give one illustrated example of a date letter, N for 1938 in a block letter sans serif font. Seemingly, the letter cycle would be A-1926 through U-1945.

The Egyptian assay office was founded by the British Governorate when the new laws regarding the purity of gold and silver were introduced in 1906, although marking was not compulsory until about 10 years later. All of the directors of the Assay Office were British until the late 1930's, and their portraits hang on the walls of the present Director's office in Cairo. For reasons of national security (!) the Assay Office will not divulge the details of date markings.

The first sequence of marking started with the cat, and the English alphabet was used for date lettering until this was complete. It was then followed by the letters of the Egyptian Arabic alphabet, although not all of the letters were used as many of them are similar. When the Arabic alphabet was exhausted the symbol was changed to the lotus and the Arabic alphabet started again from the beginning. Again not all of the letters were used.

There were four assay offices, in Cairo, Alexandria, Beni Suef and Tanta, and the town is denoted by an Arabic letter above the purity mark. Marks other than Cairo and Alexandria are rare, and buyers of silver usually relied upon the maker's mark as assay office officials outside Cairo were not trusted.