The Postal Memory of the Egyptian History, from the postage stamps collection of Tarek Waly Center Architecture & Heritage
History books don’t solely record history, as facts may be mistaken for bias by these book writers. However, history can be recorded through other methods. One of them is the philately, or what is known as the study of postage stamps and postal history. These stamps can be considered a recorded history of a nation’s significant events. Through the information recorded on postage stamps, we can understand and realize the history of a nation, its people’s habits, and culture as well as its economic, social, and political conditions. Here, stamps have passed toward a new function as records for history.
Every postage stamp has its memory and story, each stamp bears messages, meanings, and indices of people’s prosperity. It also documents stages, events, and figures of historical, political, cultural, and scientific significance. Stamps have played and still play a great role as a cultural expression for the whole of humanity that finally put us before a holistic work of art.
Preserving history doesn't just happen in museums.
Rather, it is preserving the memory of the nation by presenting all the evidence of that history.
Including national postage stamp collections
The postage stamp... is a bridge of communication and a message from the past to the present.
The private collection of postage stamps by Tarek Waly Center Architecture and Heritage consists of about 5,500 stamps from Egypt, all Arab countries, and various foreign countries, dating back to the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the 21st century. The collection includes around 800 stamps from foreign countries, while it includes around 1,200 stamps from a number of Arab countries. The Egyptian postage stamps make the most important part of this collection, as they represent the history of the postage stamp from their very first day until the beginning of the twenty-first century. And it consists of 1300 editions starting from the Egyptianizing of stamps in the year 1867 in Alexandria, in total the collection includes more than 3500 Egyptian postage stamps.
The book presents this private collection of Egyptian postage stamps based on a scientific methodology for the documentation and recording, to become one of the records of the nation’s memory for the coming generations.
In general, the history of the Egyptian post is long, and during this journey, the Egyptian postage stamps carried pictures that recorded political, social, and economic events
They immortalized people who had roles, positions, and achievements in various fields and successive stages
And painted a picture of the identity of man and society
Here, in this book, we present an extrapolation of these documentary images
From the collection of Egyptian stamps belonging to the Tarek Waly Center Architecture and Heritage
Postage stamps signify
The Postal Memory of the Egyptian History