Offler was the crocodile god of Discworld, and clearly based on the Egyptian god Sobek. You can see a bust of him/her in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. TP would have given details of his vision of Offler`s appearance and from this the stamp design would be built up. These artist`s sketches of Colin Edwards (the stamp designer) show how Offler`s appearance was brought to life by Alan Batley`s finished artwork, with comments annotating them - click on for enlargement. The comments are interesting and reveal a lot. Note that the concept of using hieroglyphics to describe the process of writing a letter, posting it, and the subsequent delivery and reading was present from the roughest ideas.

As stated in the introduction the Offler stamps were originally prepared for both Klatch and Djelibeybi, but were dropped for the former state. Nevertheless, originals for this stamp have cropped up as imperforate single stamps, blocks, and entire sheets. Some singles were used to decorate post, while others have appeared in Wadfest goody-bags and at the charity auction there. It is not known whether the purple and grey colour scheme was the original, or whether that was the intended release colours. There does seem to be some examples with a variation on the colours, and the sheet is quite different in layout to the issued Djelibeybi stamp sheet, though some of the eastern style text in the margins was retained and expanded upon. The sheet held one sport, where Offler had a black eye. The sheet image here is in too low resolution to show this.

An earlier sheet may be this one; a colour option sheet, printed to help decide which colours or combination would suit the stamp best. Sometimes on such sheets each stamp is a different colour, but here there are just six options, one for each row of stamps. These stamps are much smaller (48 x 25 mm) than the issued Djelibeybi 5 Pt stamp. Sheets of a single, but different colour, were mocked up, such as this blue on blue variation. You can see that some details just do not work, and are lost due to the colours.

The earliest examples of Djelibeybi Offler printings is this block of five stamps (part of an internal designer and artist test sheet, with stamps from other states) showing the basic design and four proposed sports in shades of brown. None of these are exactly as on the two issued sports. They are in order the common stamp, missing beard, reversed bird, reversed beard, and mirrored border element. The bird was reversed on one of the issued sports, but here the other two birds rotate a few degrees clockwise, while on the issued sport they rotate anti-clockwise a bit. The border element involved is the little twisty design next the the border sport of the other issued sport. Note, however, how the design fits the wording for Klatch, which would have issued the stamp, much better than Djelibeybi which looks too small for a country title. The stamp size has not increased from the Klatch prototype.

Having decided that the Offler stamp would be a Djelibeybi issue, the colour was still un-chosen; this Colour Options sheet is made up as the finished product with two panels of 12 stamps, but the colour is not as intense as the issued stamps and does not appear on the Klatch colour trial sheet above. Unusually two sports out of those four above were decided upon, and they are indicated by boxes to prevent any confusion or embarrassment at the Discworld Emporium. The size of the stamps has increased (56 x 31 mm) from the early colour test versions, leaving more selvedge on the sheet than the final designs, but are still slightly smaller than the issued stamps. The origins of this sheet with its annotations is a bit of a mystery. The colours are not right, and the stamp size seems reduced. The evidence points to it being printed on an uncalibrated printer and shrunk to fit that device`s capabilities!

Eventually the Djelibeybi stamp was issued in shades of deep green on a pea green background, and the size had increased again to 60 x 32 mm. There was a reversed border sport and a reversed birds sport included on the sheet, which housed 24 stamps in two panels with a central gutter.

      
the common                                 border sport                                bird sport

For those interested, the pictograms in the side borders of the stamp, when read downwards left side then right side, read the story of writing a letter, posting it, its delivery, and it being read.
The squiggly text in the top panel of the stamp says Djelibeybi in a far-out middle eastern style typeface. The same is used for the long selvedge inscriptions, but reading it has so far eluded me. I have tried with it inverted and mirrored to see if I can make out anything that could be the Djelibeybish version of the readable text.