Egypt document photos online

Long before passports existed, Egypt was already mastering the paperwork of statecraft. Around 1259 BC, Pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III sealed the Treaty of Kadesh, the oldest international peace treaty whose full text survives, written in cuneiform on clay. The accord was so prized that a copper replica of it hangs at United Nations headquarters in New York. From that ancient diplomacy to today's biometric green booklet, Egypt's relationship with official documents stretches across more than three thousand years, making this Nile civilisation a uniquely deep case study in how nations record, verify and protect identity.

• Passport power As of April 2025 the Egyptian passport ranked 87th on the Henley Passport Index, giving its holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to 50 countries and territories.
• Passport design The dark-green Egyptian passport carries the Coat of Arms, opens from right to left, runs to 52 pages, and prints its data in Arabic and English after French was dropped.
• Biometric era Egypt switched to machine-readable passports on 27 January 2008, engineered to ICAO Document 9303 standards with a PDF417 barcode and roughly 96.7 percent conformance.
• National ID Every Egyptian carries a 14-digit national number that encodes the century of birth, full birthdate and province of birth, staying linked to the person for life.
• Currency origin The Egyptian pound, locally 'gineih', takes its name from the British guinea coin, and its 100-piastre subdivision descends from the Ottoman Turkish kurus.
• Money milestone The pound's earliest documented appearance was on a 50-pound promissory note signed by General Gordon during the 1884 Siege of Khartoum, a year before it became the official unit.
• Citizenship Under Law No. 190 of 2019, foreigners can obtain Egyptian citizenship and its passport through investment options that include a 250,000-dollar treasury donation, with no language exam to keep it.
• Ancient treaty The Treaty of Kadesh, sealed by Ramesses II around 1259 BC, is the oldest surviving international peace accord, and a copper replica is displayed at the United Nations in New York.
• Population Egypt's domestic population passed 108 million on 16 August 2025, making it the most populous Arab nation, with a further 11 million Egyptians living abroad.