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right British mailboxes, visual counterparts to red telephone boxes, collect outbound mail for the Royal Mail to sort and deliver.
The postal system is a system by which written documents typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages containing other matter, are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.
In principle, a postal service can be private or official. Restrictions are generally placed on private systems by governments. Since the 19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as government monopolies with a fee on the article prepaid, often in the form of adhesive stamps. Government monopolies generally do not extend to delivery of parcels or courier services providing express mail .
Postal systems often have functions other than sending letters. In some countries, the postal system also has some authority over telephone and telegraph systems. In others, postal systems allow for savings accounts and handling applications for passports.
Communication via written documents which an intermediary carries from one person or place to another almost certainly dates back nearly to the invention of writing. The development of a formal postal system occurred much later, however. The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State ( 2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.
The first credible claim for the development of a real postal system comes from AssyriaThis article concerns the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom. For the modern-day peoples in northern Iraq and neighboring areas, see Assyrian. Assyria a country named after its original capital city, Asshur on the Tigris, was originally a colony of Babylonia, a, but the point of invention remains in question. The best documented claim ( XenophonXenophon ( 431- c. 354 BC), whose name means "strange sound", was an Athenian citizen, an associate of Socrates, a Philodorian and is known for his writings on Hellenic history and culture. While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by) attributes the invention to Cyrus the Great ( 550 BC), while other writers credit his successor Darius I of Persiachariot, and the symbol of Ahuramazda Darius the Great (Pers. Dariush, old Persian Darayavaush , the son of Hystaspes and Persian Emperor from 521 to 485 BC. The principal source for his history is his own inscriptions, especially the great inscription of ( 521 BC) Other sources claim much earlier dates for an Assyrian postal system, with credit given to HammurabiHammurabi (also transliterated Hammu-rapi or Khammurabi was the sixth king of Babylon. Achieving the conquest of Sumer and Akkad, ending the last Sumerian dynasty of Isin, he was the first king of the Babylonian Empire. Hammurabi reigned over Babylon and ( 1700 BC) and Sargon II ( 722 BC). Mail may not have been the primary mission of this postal service, however. The role of the system as an intelligence gathering apparatus is well documented, and the service was (later) called angariae, a term that in time turned to indicate a tax system. The Old Testament ( Esther, VIII) makes mention of this system: Ahasuerus, king of Medes, used couriers for communicating his decisions.
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