Attestation for documents issued in Egypt

An Egypt-issued document passes through four hands before a UAE employer, court or authority will act on it: the Egyptian body that owns the document, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UAE Embassy in Cairo, and MoFAIC inside the UAE. The last two are now a single application, and the UAE Embassy in Cairo publishes a turnaround of 2 to 3 business days for it.

Two things make the Egyptian route behave differently from the Indian, Pakistani or British ones. Cairo is one of the missions running the combined UAE service. And Egyptian documents are issued in Arabic, which removes a stage that costs applicants from other countries both money and time.

What “one service, two attestations” actually changes

Cairo is on MoFAIC’s short list of missions where the embassy stage and the MoFAIC stage are a single application. The mission pages put it in those words: one service, two attestations. One application covers both the UAE Embassy and MoFAIC in the UAE, and the Cairo page states that most requests are completed within 2 to 3 business days.

That is genuinely new, and it is the single most out-of-date thing on competitor pages about Egypt. A great deal of published advice still describes a fifth errand after the document lands in the UAE — a separate MoFAIC submission, with its own fee, its own wait and often its own agent. On the Cairo route that errand no longer exists as a separate step. You apply once, on mofa.gov.ae, with a UAE PASS account that a non-resident can create at uaepass.ae.

There is one more thing the combined service does not settle. MoFAIC’s own worked examples for UAE-issued documents going abroad show AED 150 at MoFAIC plus AED 150 at the UAE embassy in the destination country. Whether the mirror image applies inbound — whether the Cairo leg is an extra charge on top of MoFAIC’s AED 150, or whether AED 150 is the whole UAE-side cost — is not published anywhere. The cost table on this page shows the MoFAIC fee and flags the embassy leg separately rather than inventing a total.

The Egyptian half of the chain, authority by authority

The Egyptian stage that trips people up is the first one, because Egypt does not have a single pre-authentication body. It has a different one for almost every document type, and the Egyptian MFA will not attest a document endorsed by the wrong one.

A degree from an Egyptian public or government university, at any level, needs faculty endorsement and then the Secretary-General of the university. A certificate from a private university or a higher institute goes to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research instead. An intermediate-institute certificate goes to that ministry’s Matariya office. An academic equivalency certificate — and only an equivalency certificate — goes to the Supreme Council of Universities. Al-Azhar certificates are endorsed by Al-Azhar University and Maritime Academy certificates by the Academy.

Personal documents follow a different map again. Birth, marriage, death, divorce and family-registration certificates go through Civil Status, at Abbasiya, Giza, the City Stars model centre, the Tagamoa registry or an MFA-accredited governorate registry. A paper birth or death certificate issued by a governorate health office instead goes to the Ministry of Health or the governorate Health Affairs Directorate and then to the Secretary-General of the Governorate. A criminal record certificate goes to Criminal Evidence HQ. Powers of attorney, declarations, non-government experience certificates and lease or sale contracts go to a sub-branch Real Estate Publicity office and then to its Secretary-General. Court judgments and inheritance declarations go to the Ministry of Justice, bank documents to the Central Bank of Egypt, and an employment contract issued abroad to that country’s embassy and then the Ministry of Manpower.

Only after the right one of those has stamped the document does the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs attest it, at EGP 115 for an ordinary document or EGP 410 for a commercial one. The MFA publishes 25 attestation offices with addresses and opening hours across Cairo, Giza, Alexandria and 20 governorates, so this is not a Cairo-only errand.

Do Egyptian documents need translating?

Not for the attestation chain. MoFAIC’s stated requirement is an original document in English or Arabic, or an official translation of it. An Arabic Egyptian certificate meets that as issued, so nothing needs translating for any of the four stages.

This is a real divergence from every other origin country on this site, and it is worth being blunt about because most guides apply one translation rule to every country. An Indian, Pakistani or British applicant holds an English document. English passes the attestation chain unchanged too — but at the point of use, a UAE court, notary public, land department or bank works in Arabic, and the standard advice is to have the fully attested document translated in the UAE by a Ministry of Justice-registered legal translator. That is a separate stage and a separate bill. An Egyptian applicant with an Arabic original normally skips it.

Egypt goes further and says so directly for one class of document: birth, marriage, death, divorce and family-registration certificates endorsed by Civil Status do not require translation. Since those are precisely the documents ICP names for family sponsorship — an attested marriage contract when sponsoring a spouse, birth certificates when sponsoring children — that exemption covers the most common Egyptian use case outright.

If you do use a translation, Egypt handles it differently

Egypt is the one country on this site where the foreign ministry attests the translation itself, in-country, before the document ever leaves. The MFA attests the original first, then its translation, by the same body, with a shared seal running across original and translation. It charges a fee on both, so a translated document is EGP 115 twice, not once.

And it will only attest a translation produced by an approved body: the Ministry of Justice, the Armed Forces Language Institute, Civil Status for civil-status documents, or a government university. A translation from a private office, however good, will not carry through the Egyptian MFA. Check whether the receiving party in the UAE actually needs one before you pay for it twice.

What changes by document type

The shape of the chain is the same for every Egyptian document. What changes is which Egyptian body endorses it before the MFA, and what MoFAIC charges at the end. The Egyptian MFA fee is EGP 115 for ordinary documents and EGP 410 for commercial ones at every row below.

The timings nobody publishes, and what to do about it

One number on the Egypt route is official: 2 to 3 business days for the combined UAE Embassy Cairo and MoFAIC application. Everything before it is unpublished. The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs states no processing time, and neither do the universities, Civil Status offices or ministries that endorse documents before it.

So this page will not give you an end-to-end figure for Egypt, because no honest one exists. What it can tell you is where the risk sits. Since the Egyptian stages are the unmeasured ones, they are also the ones you should start first and chase in person if you can — the MFA’s 25 offices are spread across Cairo, Giza, Alexandria and 20 governorates, so proximity is usually not the constraint. Budget separately for courier logistics at the UAE end: collection and return sit outside the published 2 to 3 business days and typically add three to five days.

Before you send anything

• Confirm the exact Egyptian endorsing body for your document type — this is where most Egyptian applications fail.
• Check the certificate is not laminated, and that birth, marriage and death certificates are originals rather than copies.
• Check the name spelling against the passport, in both Arabic and Latin script.
• Decide whether the UAE recipient genuinely needs a translation before you pay the Egyptian MFA fee twice.
• Order any criminal record certificate last — it carries a validity window and the rest of the set does not.
• Create the UAE PASS account at uaepass.ae before you start, so the MoFAIC application is not the thing you are stuck on.

You can do all of this yourself

No stage of the Egyptian chain requires an agent. The Egyptian MFA counters are public and priced at EGP 115. The UAE stage is applied for on mofa.gov.ae with a UAE PASS login that non-residents can create themselves, and MoFAIC states that anyone can attest documents on your behalf — no power of attorney is needed to submit someone else’s document. MoFAIC also closed its Customer Happiness Centres on 18 July 2022, so there is no counter anywhere for anyone to queue at on your behalf; the myth of the walk-in MoFAIC centre survives on a lot of competitor pages and is simply wrong.

What is genuinely worth paying for is knowing which Egyptian body endorses your document type, and not mis-selecting the document type on the MoFAIC form, because a rejection cannot be amended and sends you back to a stage with no published turnaround. What nobody can do is compress the Egyptian half, or tell you in advance how long it will take. If a quote does either, ask which published source it comes from.