and have a confused pile of Egyptian and possibly Syrian coins to ponder over. I have seen some coins on the net that appear Egyptian described as Syrian. Did Egypt and Syria share a common coinage during the United Arab period? Is there a key point on an Egyptian coin to tell if it's Egyptian? Also, the eagle sometimes has 0, 1, 2 or 3 stars in the shield. What is the significance of the stars and the number? 
Have tried googling for answers but not getting anywhere.
Is there a good online guide that gives the background about this? Thanks
Posted 06/02/2020 07:46 am
@David, a lot of us use the online catalog Numista for coin identification. According to the sections for Egypt https://en.numista.com/catalogue/eg...c_egypte6165
and Syria https://en.numista.com/catalogue/sy...#c_syrie6163 I see these patterns:
- before 1958 thw falcon/hawk is used only on Syrian coins, and not on Egyptian as far as I can tell, and faces right.
- during the United Arab Republic period, the bird faces left and has 2 stars for the two nations. While the obverse designs are often similar, the reverse designs are very different.
- after the UAR period it looks like both countries use the falcon facing right, but only Syria uses 3 stars (though not always)
Unless you can read Arabic, I think you will need to use the catalog, or an app like Coinoscope to tell apart the coins during the UAR period, or later when the bird has no stars,
Edited by tdziemia
06/02/2020 08:14 am
06/02/2020 08:14 am
