Seven catalogue files, one corrections register, one open methodology document.

Three to four weeks for a single specimen sent by post with adequate photographic plates; longer if the specimen needs to be examined in person at the Ismailia office. The wait list at any one time is typically between four and ten specimens; for institutional curators with collection-management deadlines we work to a written deadline.

Yes — registered post with declared customs value, insured for the assessed value at the requester's cost. We have a standing protocol with Egyptian customs and DHL Express; the protocol is sent with the booking confirmation. Specimens are stored in the office safe and returned within twenty-one days of receipt. We have no record of a lost or damaged specimen in twelve years of operation.

Eleven pages covering the photographic standard, the weight and measurement procedure, the attribution decision tree, the provenance documentation requirements, the two-editor sign-off protocol, the forgery-detection process, the correction issuance procedure and the appeals route. The document is open and downloadable; it has been revised six times since 2014, with the change log in the appendix.

Because hosting marketplace listings would compromise the editorial independence the atlas is built on. We see commercial listing platforms (Numisbids, Sixbid, Vcoins and others) as legitimate parts of the wider numismatic economy; they are not the role we play. Our role is to document specimens, not to sell them. Readers who want to acquire specimens are directed to the licensed-dealer list maintained by the Cairo Numismatic Society.

Yes, with attribution. Quotations of up to four hundred words from any single catalogue file or bulletin are within fair use for journalistic and academic purposes; longer quotations should be cleared in advance with the editorial board via the contact form. The atlas's twelve-year corrections record makes it a stable citation source.

Write to the desk with the disagreement, your supporting argument and your supporting comparable specimens. The editorial board considers every challenge that meets the threshold of a structured numismatic argument; we have changed thirty-one attributions in response to reader challenges since 2014 (recorded in the corrections register). Challenges that do not meet the threshold receive a courteous reply explaining what would be needed to reopen the question.

Not currently. The atlas operates entirely in digital and PDF distribution. A three-volume printed compendium covering 2014–2024 is under preliminary discussion with a Leiden academic publisher; if it proceeds, expected publication is 2028 with separately printed editions in English and Arabic. Subscribers will be the first informed if the project goes ahead.

The atlas's editorial archive holds approximately eighty reference specimens — most donated by editors from personal pre-atlas collections, several purchased through the Cairo Numismatic Society at academic rates. The archive is used for die-comparison work and for training new editors. Specimens in the archive are clearly identified in the catalogue with the AC- prefix. The archive is not for sale and is not exhibited publicly; academic visitors may examine the archive by appointment.

Specimens we have positively identified as modern forgeries are entered into a separate forgery register, not into the main catalogue. The forgery register is published openly (without the original owner's identity) and is intended to serve as a working reference for collectors, curators and other cataloguers. The register currently lists forty-one identified modern forgeries with their characteristic diagnostic features. The forgery register is the only place in the atlas where we record specimens we are not willing to authenticate.

Yes, conducted by Soraya el-Mursi for the Ptolemaic series and by Hamza al-Marsafi for the Roman provincial. The die studies are published as separate brief essays in the monthly bulletin rather than as standalone files; nine die-study essays have appeared since 2020. The most extensive study to date is Soraya's 2024 analysis of the Ptolemy III obverse-die sequence at Alexandria, identifying forty-seven distinct dies across the reign and proposing a working sequence of die-engraver shifts. Die studies are time-consuming and the atlas accepts that the pace is one or two studies per year rather than a regular series.

Summary minutes — including attendance, agenda items, decisions taken and abstentions — are published in the December annual transparency note. Full minutes are held by the secretary and are available on request to subscribers and journalists with a reasonable scholarly or editorial interest. The atlas does not publish full minutes openly because the board occasionally discusses provenance matters and specific specimen-ID requests in which third-party confidentiality must be preserved.

The atlas is one of several active scholarly publications in the Mediterranean numismatic field, alongside the long-running Israel Numismatic Research, the Cahier Numismatique (which has run since 1936 and is the field's senior journal), the Numismatic Chronicle of the Royal Numismatic Society, and the more recent online Journal of Mediterranean Numismatics that launched in 2018. The relationships are collegial; we cite their work, they cite ours, occasional editorial visits move in both directions. The atlas's distinctive position is the open digital catalogue with the calibrated photographic plates and the consolidated cross-period Egyptian focus.

English is the primary publication language; the monthly bulletin and the catalogue entries are in English. Arabic is the secondary publication language for the corrections register and the annual transparency note. The editorial team between them reads classical Greek, Latin, French, German, Dutch, Coptic and classical Arabic. We accept correspondence in English, Arabic, French and German routinely and in other languages on a best-effort basis.

Write to the desk with the seminar's institution, instructor name and approximate number of students. The atlas has hosted short visiting-seminar visits at the Ismailia office on twelve occasions since 2014 (the most recent in March 2026 for a Mansoura University seminar of nine MA students). For seminars unable to visit, we have produced specific teaching extracts of the catalogue with the instructor's consent on six occasions; the work is unpaid by the atlas but is logged in the transparency note. The Institutional library licence is the most common channel for teaching-quality access.