Three subscription tiers, all of them honest, none of them carrying advertising.

How the billing works

The Reader and Editor's tiers can be paid quarterly or annually, in US dollars, through a Cairo-based payment processor that supports international Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay. Egyptian-issued cards (Banque Misr, NBE, CIB and the major retail banks) are supported in EGP at the prevailing CBE rate. The processor is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant and we do not store card numbers on our servers; the processor tokenises each transaction. The Institutional tier is paid annually by bank transfer in EGP or USD against an invoice issued on Muse Egypt letterhead with the Egyptian tax registration 472-865-193 printed at the foot.

Receipts are issued automatically by email after each successful payment. The receipt is suitable as a business expense voucher in most jurisdictions and the legal entity on the receipt is Muse Egypt Heritage Letters L.L.C. Readers who need a more detailed VAT invoice — sometimes requested by corporate readers — can ask the desk and we will issue one manually within two working days. Renewals are billed automatically on the same date each year unless you have asked us to cancel the auto-renewal; we also send a renewal-notice email two weeks before the charge so there are no surprises.

Cancellation, refunds and pauses

Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time by writing to the desk. We do not require a reason and we do not run a retention call. If you have paid annually and want a refund of the unposted issues, we issue the pro-rata refund within five working days. Subscribers can pause for travel or other reasons; the pause has no proration penalty up to three months a year, and the missed printed issues are held in storage and posted on resumption. The pause is operational generosity rather than a marketing promise — keeping good readers across an interruption is cheaper than acquiring new ones, and most subscribers pause once and resume.

Tier upgrades and downgrades are handled at the desk on request. Upgrade from Reader to Editor's mid-year produces a pro-rata top-up for the rest of the year and the next annual hardcover ships at the December dispatch. Downgrade from Editor's to Reader takes effect at the next renewal date — we do not refund the unused hardcover or planning-letter component within an annual cycle, because both are already produced or scheduled. Institutional tier sits outside the upgrade-downgrade matrix because the licence terms are institution-specific.

For libraries and university departments

The Institutional tier is designed for libraries, university research departments, cultural attaché offices and the small number of museum reading rooms that have asked to license Muse Egypt for their members. The licence covers up to fifteen named readers in the institution, four printed copies of each quarterly delivered to a single coordinating address, four copies of the annual hardcover, and citation rights for academic and educational use. We do not currently offer a tier above fifteen readers; institutions with larger usage requirements should write to the desk and we will discuss an arrangement.

The library and academic licensees who have taken the Institutional tier since 2024 include readers at the American University in Cairo's library, the Egyptology department at the Sorbonne, the British Museum's research library, the Berlin Egyptian Museum's reading room, three university libraries in the United States, the Cairo Goethe-Institut, and several embassy cultural offices. We are happy to confirm any of the above on request as references. Press use of the letters by working journalists is free and unrestricted with attribution; we do not require advance permission for press citation and do not charge for press use.

Reader FAQ on tiers