100 Pounds 2021, Egypt
| in Krause book | Number: 74 |
| Years of issue: | 08.02.2021 |
| Edition: | |
| Signatures: | Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt: Tarek Hassan Nour El Din Amer (from 27.11.2015) |
| Serie: | 2014-2015 Issue |
| Specimen of: | 2014 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 166 x 70 |
| Printer: | The Printing House of the Central Bank of Egypt |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
The funerary mask of Tutankhamun. Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.
In the 31st century BC, when Pharaoh Men managed to conquer northern Africa near the Nile Delta, a kingdom emerged that included two components - Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, whose art history can be divided into periods: the ancient kingdom (31-22 centuries BC.), the Middle Kingdom (21-16 cc. BC.), the new kingdom (16-11 cc. BC.) and the late period (11 c. BC. - 6 century BC.).
During the first dynasties, pyramids began to be erected - “houses after life”. In the land part of the pyramids, chapels and auxiliary premises were created, and in the underground part there were burial chambers. Since death was considered an underground continuation of life, burials were decorated with jewels, everything necessary for another world, and decorated with scenes from this and that life.
A golden mask located on the mummy was found during the examination of the tomb of Tutankhamun - the pharaoh from the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom, who ruled Egypt in 1332-1323 BC. er His tomb miraculously turned out to be unoffrained and everyday objects telling about the life of one of the pharaohs survived to us. He was a young man who ruled the country for 9 years and died suddenly, probably from an illness, who did not live to be 20 years old.
The masks were created so that the pharaohs would not lose their faces in the new life and would look appropriately worthy of their dignity, despite the processes of corruption. The art of making burial objects was perfected over thousands of years, each element was proportionally verified and involved in the overall compositional structure, and also endowed with a symbolic meaning.
The golden mask of Tutankhamen, considered to be one of the great monuments of art, was made of 9 kilograms of pure gold and depicts Tutankhamun in a headdress - a scarf, one of the symbols of royal power, called "Kraft-usherbi". The two sides of the klaft, which are evenly lowered onto the necklace collar, testified that the power of the pharaoh extended into two kingdoms. On top of the scarf was fastened another symbol of power - Urey - a diadem with images of the head of a hawk and a cobra. The hawk Nekhbet and the cobra Uadzhet are symbols of two deities protecting Upper and Lower Egypt. The blue stripes on the yellow claft and on the collar - a necklace (a sign of the sun, a popular ornament in ancient Egypt) were the privilege of the pharaohs. The third symbol - a symbol of land ownership, was a patch beard. Wide-open eyes testified to the continuation of life and in the next world, and auricles - to the eternal perception of the surrounding world. (salman-spektor.livejournal.com .rus)
The burial mask of Tutankhamen made of gold was not intended for this ancient Egyptian pharaoh, but for Queen Nefertiti. This conclusion, as reported by The Independent, came the former curator of the department of Ancient Egypt in the British Museum, archaeologist Nicholas Reeves.
The scientist came to his conclusions for two reasons. First, in September 2015, a retouched stamp with the name of Queen Nefertiti was found on a gold mask. Secondly, the ears on the mask were punctured, which is typical for masks designed for women and children.
Scientists came to such discoveries after Tutankhamun’s funeral mask restoration work: her beard fell away as a result of an accident, which had to be hurriedly returned to its original place (glued) in January 2015.
In 2015, the archaeologist Reeves surprises the scientific community for the second time. The first time this happened was when he reported on the discovery of the door hidden in and supposedly leading to the tomb of Nefertiti in Tutankhamun’s tomb, as well as retouched images illustrating the life of the young Pharaoh.
Pharaoh Tutankhamen from Ancient Egypt from the XVIII dynasty of the New Kingdom ruled the country around 1332-1323 BC. He died at the age of 19. His stepmother was Nefertiti, and her father was her husband Akhenaten. The causes of Nefertiti's death and the place of her burial are still unknown.
Avers:
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The Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hassan (Arabic: مسجد ومدرسة السلطان حسن) is a monumental mosque and madrasa located in the historic district of Cairo, Egypt. It was built between 1356 and 1363 during the Bahri Mamluk period, commissioned by Sultan an-Nasir Hasan. The mosque was considered remarkable for its massive size and innovative architectural components, and is still considered one of the most impressive historic monuments in Cairo today.
The mosque occupies almost 8000 square meters in a location close to the Citadel of Cairo.[1] It stands on the site of a lavish palace which had previously been built at great cost by Hasan's father, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, for one of his amirs, Yalbugha al-Yahawi, and which was demolished to make way for the mosque. The construction of monumental buildings on this location was likely meant in part to create a pleasing sight for the Sultan to look down on from his palace in the Citadel.
During the medieval era, an open square, known as Rumayla, lay between the mosque and the Citadel. Today the square is occupied by a large traffic circle and has been renamed Salah ad-Din Square. The square and the former hippodrome nearby (on the southwestern side of the Citadel) were historically used for military parades, equestrian games, and official ceremonies, thus giving the location added symbolic significance.
The building is about 500 meters long, 68 meters wide, and 36 meters high. Like all mosques, it is oriented towards Mecca, which is to the southeast of Cairo. The building's southwestern and northeastern facades (its longer sides) are marked by vertical rows of eight windows each (spread across four stories inside) which are a unique feature that helps to visually emphasize the structure's height. The top edge of the exterior facades are crowned by a thick cornice of muqarnas (stalactite-like carving) projecting 1.5 meters over the rest of the wall, another unprecedented feature in Mamluk architecture, although it does not extend around the entire building. Likewise, a crest of fleur-de-lis-shaped crenelations also ran along the whole length at the very top edge of the walls, but today it is only preserved around the mausoleum's walls on the southeastern side. The southeastern or Citadel-facing walls of the mosque and mausoleum have windows framed by more elaborate stone decoration in various patterns. The triangular-shaped spaces above the bottom windows here were once filled with geometric ceramic decoration, possibly of Anatolian Turkish inspiration.
Near the bottom of the southwestern wall, below today's street level, is a row of stone corbels projecting from the wall which likely served to support the roof of a covered market along the street on this side.
The mosque today has two minarets flanking the mausoleum chamber on the southeastern side of the structure. The southern one of this pair, which is still in its original form, is the highest minaret of Mamluk architecture, its summit being 84 meters above the street level at the time. The northern one collapsed in 1659 and was rebuilt in its current form in 1671-72. The original northern minaret was said to be more monumental, and its summit was "double-headed"; in other words, it culminated in two lantern structures (instead of the usual one), a feature that reappeared much later in the minaret of Sultan al-Ghuri at the al-Azhar Mosque and in the minaret of the nearby Mosque of Qanibay ar-Rammah.
Additionally, two more minarets were originally intended to stand above the monumental portal of the mosque, very much like in the architecture of Mongol Ilkhanid and Anatolian Seljuk madrasas and mosques around the same period (for example, the Gök Madrasa in Sivas, Turkey, or the Great Mosque of Yazd, Iran), which were almost certainly an inspiration. This would have given the mosque a total of four minarets, which would have been unprecedented in Islamic architecture in Egypt. However, in 1361, during construction, one of those minarets toppled and killed around 300 people, including children in the primary school below. After this, the builders abandoned their construction, leaving only the two minarets adjacent to the mausoleum that we see today.
The entrance portal is gigantic by the standards of mosque architecture and is 38 meters high. It was built at an angle projecting 17 degrees outwards from the rest of the wall so as to be visible from the Citadel. Its shape and the layout of its decoration indicate obvious inspiration from the portals of madrasas and mosques in Anatolian Seljuk and Mongol Ilkhanid architecture of the time, particularly the portal of the Gök (Blue) Madrasa in Sivas, Turkey, built in 1271. On the inside of the portal, behind the stone benches and flanking the doorway, are a pair of marble niches filled with geometric patterns reminiscent of Qur'an illumination and culminating in shallow muqarnas hoods (also Anatolian in style). Above these are black marble panels inlaid with white Kufic Arabic inscriptions of parts of the Surat al-Fath (Sura of Victory) from the Qur'an. The Shahada (the Muslim declaration of faith) is inscribed in "square" Kufic higher up above this, while further up is a band of inscription containing another Quranic verse (24:36-37), running along the full width of the inside of the portal, just below the muqarnas canopy.
The decoration of the portal was apparently never finished. There are many examples of stone carvings whose initial outlines were drawn into the stone but were never carved out. The broad and impressive muqarnas canopy over the doorway does not appear to be fully carved out either, while above this a section of stone cladding appears to be missing. Other bands of stone-carved decoration were only partially executed. For example, at the foot of the decorative niche on the left side of the portal one arabesque medallion was carved on the left while the one on the right was not. (This is also a rare demonstration of the steps in the stone-carving process: it is likely that a master craftsman drew the outlines of the pattern into the stone and that apprentices were later responsible for carving it out; in this case, the second step was not completed.) Some of the carved patterns, even if unfinished, are themselves notable; for example, there are floral chinoiserie motifs here which appear in other Mamluk crafts of the time but do not appear anywhere else in Mamluk architecture. Another minor but curious feature is the sculpted image of other architectural buildings in some of the carvings just above the stairs leading up to the portal; these are possibly spoils from a Gothic-style Christian monument, presumably from Crusader churches located on the estates donated to the madrasa-mosque's foundation.
The original bronze-covered doors of the entrance were forcibly purchased at a modest price by Sultan Mu'ayyad in the early XV century for use on his own mosque, and can still be seen there today. 
As far as I can imagine, the banknote shows a view of the Southern minaret and the Medrese of Hanafites.
Revers:
The Great Sphinx of Giza.
The Great Sphinx of Giza (Arabic: أبو الهول Abū al-Haul, English: The Terrifying One; literally: Father of Dread), commonly referred to as the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining or couchant sphinx (a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head) that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the face of the Pharaoh Khafra.
It is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 73.5 meters (241 ft.) long, 19.3 meters (63 ft.) wide, and 20.22 m. (66.34 ft.) high. It is the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafra (c. 2558-2532 BC).
The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues but basic facts about it are still subject to debate, such as when it was built, by whom, and for what purpose. These questions have resulted in the popular idea of the "Riddle of the Sphinx", alluding to the original Greek legend of the Riddle of the Sphinx.
Below, on the right - the denomination of the banknote showed in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
With the hieroglyphs below, on the right, one of my good friends from Russia helped me.
Here is, what he wrote to me:
1) The first image, on the left - This means "Kemet settlement", i.e. Black (fertile) land settlement. Which means - EGYPT!
2) The second image, on the left - means - silver.
3) The third image, on the left, means the number 100.
As a result, we have: 100 Egyptian pieces of silver, or, in other words, 100 Egyptian guineas (in Arabic it is written guinea) or, as we are more accustomed to, 100 Egyptian pounds!
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