Egyptian Vehicle Registration Number plates are license plates used for official identification purposes for motor vehicles in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. Due to lack of machinery, the signs are produced and labeled by a private firm in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Appearance

The new vehicle registration plates, which have been used since August 2008, are rectangular in shape and made of aluminum.
The top part has the word "Egypt" in English and Arabic in black font on backgrounds of different colors depending on the type of license the vehicle is given. Motorbikes have similar but much smaller plates with light blue (private motorbikes) and dark blue (police motorbikes) the only colors available.

The vehicle registration number consists of two parts:

• Numeric part: 3 numbers for Cairo license plates, 4 for the rest of the governorates (including Giza.)
• Alphabetical part: 2 letters for Giza license plates, 3 letters the rest of the governorates (including Cairo
  Cairo
  Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
  
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000-xxx	Cairo Cairo Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...  vehicle registration number
0000-xx	Giza vehicle registration number
0000-xxx	Other vehicle registration numbers

Use of Latin

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

 letters and Western Arabic numerals

Arabic numerals

Arabic numerals or Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals or Indo-Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, in which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a numeral...

 to correspond to the Arabic

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...

 letters and Eastern Arabic numerals

Eastern Arabic numerals

The Eastern Arabic numerals are the symbols used to represent the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet in the countries of the Arab world....

 is optional.

To reduce the risk of confusion on account of the visual similarity between Arabic letters, only a limited number of letters are used. They and the Latin letters the Egyptian government uses to correspond to them are:

Arabic letter	Latin letter
أ Aleph * Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...	A
ب	B
ج	G
د Dalet Dalet is the fourth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic...	D
ر Resh Resh is the twentieth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or , but also or in Hebrew....	R
س Shin (letter) Shin literally means "Sharp" ; It is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic/Hebrew , and Arabic ....	S
ص Tsade ' is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew ' and Arabic ' . Its oldest sound value is probably , although there is a variety of pronunciation in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects...	C
ط Teth ' is the ninth letter of many Semitic abjads , including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tet , Syriac and Arabic ; it is 9th in abjadi order and 16th in modern Arabic order....	T
ع Ayin ' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...	E
ف Pe (letter) Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei and Persian, Arabic ....	F
ق Qoph Qoph or Qop is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is an emphatic or . The OHED gives the letter Qoph a transliteration value of Q or a K and a final transliteration value as a ck...	K
ل Lamedh Lamed or Lamedh is the twelfth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Lamed and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is .The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Lambda , Latin L, and Cyrillic Л.-Origins:...	L
م Mem Mem is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic...	M
ن Nun (letter) Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . It is the third letter in Thaana , pronounced as "noonu"...	N
هـ	H
و Vav VAV as a three-letter abbreviation may refer to* A Volcanic Ash Victim meaning someone who has been left stranded by a volcanic ash cloud that is hindering air travel.* A variable air volume device, used in HVAC systems to control the flow of air...	W
ی Yodh Yodh is the tenth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Yud , Syriac and Arabic...	Y

Design and Format

The top rectangle in the license plate is color-coded according to the type of vehicle being licensed.

• Private vehicles: Light Blue
• Taxis: Orange
• Trucks: Red
• Government-owned vehicles (including public buses): Gray
• Limousines and tourists' buses: Beige
• Diplomatic vehicles: Green
• Vehicles with unpaid customs: Yellow. These retain the pre-2008 design; the plate numbers are purely numeric (rather than alphanumeric) and are given in large print in Arabic on the right, and in smaller print in English on the left, resulting in a longer plate.
• Police vehicles: Dark blue; additionally, the Arabic and English for "Police" replace "Egypt" in the upper bar.

Older versions

Before the introduction of the new alphanumeric plate system in August of 2008, Egyptian vehicle registration numbers were purely numeric, and registered by governorate

Governorates of Egypt

Egypt is divided for administrative purposes into 27 governorates . Egyptian governorates are the top tier of the country's five-tier jurisdiction hierarchy. A governorate is administered by a governor, who is appointed by the President of Egypt and serves at the president's discretion...

and registration type. Privately-owned vehicles were generally given white plates with black lettering; other vehicles' plates were color-coded, with the entire plate being in the applicable color, as follows:

• Taxis: Orange
• Trucks: Red
• Government-owned vehicles, including police: Blue, sometimes with a white bar
• Public buses: Gray
• Vehicles with unpaid customs: Yellow

Early 2000s	1990s	1980s	1970s

Some of these older plates are still in use, but it is the government's intention to replace all the plates with the new color-coded plates within 1 to 2 years.