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The ROPiT cachet or cancellation illustrated on
these two items is not listed by Tchilingirian and his collaborators, either in
the original 1958 handbook or the later additions. Nor can I find it
illustrated on the internet.
The ROPiT agencies on Mont Athos were probably
housed together though they would have been very busy and there would have been
separate counters for matters relating to goods shipped by ROPiT and mail which
ROPiT ships also carried. Though this large oval cachet is in a standard design
found cancelling mail from other offices, it may be that this Mont Athos one
was most frequently used on paperwork of one kind or another. But it should be
possible to find it on mail or, at least, loose stamps.
The 1892 document shows the cachet in an early
state, the letters crisp. Interestingly, the notepaper has an English
papermaker’s watermark with Crown over ORIGINAL ROYAL MILL.
The 1911 printed ROPiT form in Russian and French
relates to a shipment of oil (“Huile”) arriving from Odessa. It is interesting
because the Turkish fiscal shows that goods arriving in or leaving Athos were
subject to Ottoman taxation. In contrast, it seems that mail went in and out
without Ottoman involvement unless it had been routed via Constantinople rather
than arriving directly by ROPiT ship into Athos.
I have only these two examples of the cachet and I
guess from the absence of Google images that it is rare.
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