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Description: | Sir Robert Hyde Greg (1876Ã-1953) spent much of his career in Egypt, working in various semi-ambassadorial roles for the British Government. In 1929 he became British Commissioner for the Egyptian Debt and subsequently retired to Giza, surrounded by the many antiquities and art objects he and his wife had carefully collected over forty years. The collection spanned many Egyptian periods but two aspects stand out in particular; the Predynastic and Early Dynastic stone vase collection and the assortment of bronze statuettes.
Greg was an active member on the Committees of Egyptian, Coptic, and Moslem Monuments and was chosen by the Director General of the Antiquities' Service as a member of an advisory panel set up in 1943 to give advice on the conservation of the tombs at Thebes.
He had visited the Fitzwilliam Museum on numerous occasions and maintained a keen interest in the museum's development through the Fitzwilliam Museum Syndicate's Annual Report. He corresponded regularly with the then director of the museum, Mr Charles Winter, taking the time to comment upon the Museum's work. During his summer visit in 1949 Greg was particularly impressed by the newly displayed Gayer-Anderson collection and complimented the director on its organisation. He noted that although this was a wonderful assemblage of Egyptian artefacts, its bronze display was lacking and he felt that his collection would complement the existing one well.
Upon his death in 1954, 626 Egyptian antiquities were bequeathed to the museum with the wish that they be displayed in order to encourage the teaching and appreciation of Egyptological studies in Cambridge. These included many of his magnificent bronzes, which are now on display in case 11. Additionally, a large portion of the money from the auction of his Giza villa and its contents was made available to the museum for use in any manner it saw fit.
Unfortunately, his estate was confiscated during the Suez crisis and it was to be many years until the compensation for it was paid. This eventually formed the Greg Fund, which covered the expenses for the lighting of the museum's picture galleries and the remodelling the Antiquities Department's displays. In 1964, the larger of the two Egyptian galleries was named the "Greg Room", now gallery 19, in honour of the generosity of the benefactor and was opened to the public seventeen years after his death. The Greg Fund has continued to be used over the years to acquire objects to expand and fill gaps within the Egyptian collection. One of the most recent of these was the sandstone temple relief of Domitian, acquired in 2003. | Format: | physical | Subjects: | Egyptology | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | 01223 332 923 | Telephone: | 01223 332 900 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:8399 | Format: | physical | Go to resource |
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