Egypt Decided to Issue a Stamp in Honor of the Suez Canal. There Was Just One Little Problem.

The Egyptian postal service issued stamps to commemorate a major construction project to expand the Suez Canal, but social media users noticed that the photo in the stamp depicted the Panama Canal in Central America, Al Arabiya reported.

#Egypt issues stamps of "new Suez Canal", but steals an image of the #Panama Canal instead. Major fail. pic.twitter.com/psUm2u17M2

— Amro Ali (@_amroali) September 13, 2014

Egypt’s Ministry of Communications on Saturday stopped the printing of the stamps after the gaffe was discussed widely on social media, the Cairo Post reported.

According to Egypt’s Youm7 daily, Minister of Communications Atef Helmy ordered an investigation to discover how the mistake had occurred and who was responsible.

TheBlaze has not independently verified the image of the stamp posted on Twitter, but the mistake was reported in western publications over the weekend including in Britain's Telegraph and the New York Daily News which published a photo of the full stamp.

Postal officials at first reportedly denied the stamp was incorrect and claimed that the image had been Photoshopped.

In this Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014 file photo, an Egyptian soldier stands guard near the Suez Canal as an American container ship crosses the Suez Canal in Ismailia, Egypt. Egypt selected a consortium of Egyptian and the Persian Gulf companies to develop the government's mega project to transform the Suez Canal waterway into a hub of international investment and free trade zones, officials said on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2014. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

Youm7 reported that the publication Masrawy on Friday had quoted a “reliable” Postal Authority source who had said, “This stamp is fake; our official postage stamps haven’t been released yet. This must be an organized plan to attack and criticize the New Suez Canal, a huge and national project.”

But the mistake appears to have now been acknowledged. Al Arabiya, quoting Youm7, reported that an unnamed official said the mistake on the stamp would be corrected.

(H/T: Al Arabiya)