Obtaining an International Driving Permit in Egypt.
To get the IDP, your Egyptian driver's license must still be good for at least a year. You have to take this license (no matter in what governorate it was issued) and your passport (doesn't matter what country the passport is from, dual citizens can use their foreign passport) to the traffic office next to Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in Medinet Nasr in Cairo.
At this office, you need to ask for the "letter for the international license." There is one room at this office where there are two guys whose sole job is to issue these letters. Give them your license and your passport and they will record its info in a book and give you a small slip of paper (the "letter") and tell you to take it down the hall to another office to have it sealed. All this is done free of charge and will take about 10-15 minutes.
Now you need to go to the office of the Egyptian Automobile and Touring Club. This is in downtown Cairo on Sharia Qasr al-Nil. It's about halfway between Midan Tahrir and Midan Talaat Harb, across the street from HSBC. You will see an archway leading into a courtyard. Go through the archway and enter the entrance on the left side of the courtyard and go to the second or third floor (depending on how you count!) and turn right (you will see a sign in English). The office is at the end of this hall.
They accept applications between 9:30 and 12:30. You will need to give them the letter, 2 personal photos, a photocopy of your driver's license, the original driver's license, your passport, and 40LE. They will give you an application to fill out in English and Arabic. If you are a dual citizen, you can put your foreign name on the English part so that what appears on the IDP matches your foreign identification rather than the official Egyptian name. I put the Egyptian name on the Arabic part and the American name on the English part.
They will hold on to your license while they process the paperwork, give you a receipt, and will tell you that it will be ready at 2pm. You will get back an IDP that is good for one year and they will have stapled (!?) your Egyptian license to the IDP.
If you time things properly, you could easily finish all this in less than 4 hours in a single day.