 `The MYERS COLLECTION was bequeathed
To the School by Major WJ Myers (CW-D 1872-75)
Adjutant Eton College Volunteers 1898-99
Killed at Farquhars Farm South Africa
30th October 1899`
- text of dedicatory inscription in the old Myers Museum
The Myers Museum
GAD Tait
[Undated MS, c1950; Myers Museum Archive]
The Myers Collection. Major WJ Myers was ADC to General Stephenson, C-in-C Cairo from 1882-1887, a time when Egyptian tombs were frequently found by natives and their contents dispersed, and Myers bought many of his Egyptian antiquities then, partly from Cairo dealers, partly by travelling up the Nile and buying locally, and partly through a friendship with Brugsch Bey. Brugsch was a natural son of the Kaiser, William [Wilhelm] I, whose influence got him the post of assistant conservator in the Cairo Museum.
In 1898 Dr Warre urged Myers to come as Adjutant to the Volunteers: he was devoted to the School and settled happily in No 1 Willowbrook which was full of his treasures of many kinds, prints, brocades, porcelain, brass, stamps. He was much liked and respected, and on Sunday afternoons he loved to show his things to boys or he would meet crowds of them in the Museum by Lower Chapel where he and MD Hill the Curator had much in common. He was at Eton at the beginning of the Michaelmas Half 1899, but he left at once with his regiment for South Africa and within four days of arrival he was killed by a sniper. A special number of the Chronicle No. 863, December 1899, shows how great was the shock at Eton. He left in his Will that MD Hill be empowered to make a selection from his possessions to form a teaching collection for the School, and a remark which Hill made to me shortly before he died suggested that Myers and he had discussed this together and had decided that the entire Egyptian collection be offered to the College. Sir Dudley Myers, his brother and residuary legatee, persuaded the Provost and Fellows to accept it, and Hill somehow made room for it in the Natural History Museum. In the designing of the Memorial Buildings Dr Warre arranged that a lobby be alloted for the Myers Collection; and where now is the Macnaghten Library was an open stone-lined space containing cases varnished black, with the antiquities crowded on boards covered with red baize. Of Myers` other possessions at Willowbrook his Mosque Lamps, of which he was particularly fond, were sold to the V[ictoria] and A[lbert Museum] for a ridiculously low figure of £3,000, at his request; and the rest was sold at Christie`s. Some years later some Egyptian antiquities were sold at Sotheby`s as from the Myers Collection and some of them are labelled as such in the B[ritish] M[useum] and the V[ictoria] and A[lbert]. These were not from Willowbrook, most unhappily, but had been in his sister`s house near Watford which he frequently visited.
The Copeland Collection, containing three very fine Cycladic vases of c2000 BC. Captain Copeland surveyed the Eastern Mediterranean from 1825-36, beginning at Melos where he would have acquired those vases. When he retired, he lived in Slough and Windsor, and his widow`s pension was paid to the Windsor Post Office[;] perhaps they had made friends with Etonians and [for this reason] left their antiquities to the School.
The Newcastle Greek Vases. They were in Sir William Hamilton`s second collection of vases which he made at Naples in the 1780s. His first collection was sold to the British Government and was the beginning of the Greek and Roman Department of the BM. Maybe after the Battle of the Nile Nelson[,] in Emma`s company[,] glanced at these vases which were in Hamilton`s house in Naples. When Napoleon invaded Italy and the Neapolitan court was shipped to Palermo, Hamilton shipped his vases to England, but they were sunk off the Scillies. Some of the cases were salvaged, and a rich Amsterdam merchant named Hope, who threatened by Napoleon migrated to Britain, bought the salvaged cases. Hope`s granddaughter married the Duke of Newcastle, and the vases were ln her dowry. The Newcastle Collection was sold in 1917, but the Duke put aside some of the vases for Eton.
Several other collections of Antiquities have been given more recently to the Museum.
The Books. The entire Description de l`Egypte, the work of Napoleon`s Savants, was given to the School by Myers, and he gave many books to the School Library. In 1937 King Farouk visited Eton and he gave over £100 worth of books to the Museum where he had spent an hour.
The Building. In 1934 I suggested to Toddy [Edward Littleton] Vaughan that he persuade Dr [MR] James, who was a Trustee of the B[ritish] M[useum] to have an expert down from the BM to report on the collection. Their senior Egyptologist AW Shorter spent a day here and in a brief report he suggested that Professor [Percy E] Newberry might be willing to make a catalogue. Newberry, who had just retired after 50 years in Egyptology, had known and liked Myers and he was glad to help sort and catalogue the collection. Meanwhile Sir Eugen Millington-Drake`s collection of 1914-1918 books was amassed and waiting for housing at Eton. Of [the] negotiations [surrounding this matter] I know nothing, [but] in result, Millington-Drake converted the stone alcove into an enclosed library and built the Museum for the antiquities. Edmond Warre was architect of both structures, as subsequently of the Austen-Leigh Gallery, and he took great pains to adapt the allotted space to the existing collection. [See Appendix.] Much impressed by a new gallery in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and knowing that a shipload of the same wood from Queensland, Gravilia robusta, was at Tilbury, he used it for the panelling. The Museum was built in 1935-36, with Newberry`s eager encouragement. The old cases were stripped of their black varnish and given glass shelves. Newberry himself provided the black-and-gold numbering for the items, and gave several things from his own collection. The catalogue was only half finished when the War came and I had to dismantle the Museum; and much still remains to be done.
In 1936 a hundred reproductions of paintings by Mrs Nina Davies were published by the Oxford Press: for some thirty years she had been copying wall paintings in Egyptian tombs, for the first time copying exactly the actual conditions of the walls, and her work is both scholarly and beautiful. There are two volumes. Newberry ordered the first issued volumes to be sent to Eton in duplicate, one bound and the other in loose sheets. We selected some thirty of the sheets for hanging on the Museum walls, and Newberry and Warre ordered in the Medici Gallery frames to be handcut and mounts hand painted for each of the selected paintings. Mrs Davies came to Eton to see for the first time her paintings hanging in numbers.
The Museum, then, which may be described as unique, is here by the generosity of Myers, Millington-Drake and Newberry.
Handlist to the displays
GAD Tait
[Undated annotated TS, c1950; Myers Museum Archive]
[Editor`s note: the extant handlist and photographs were evidently prepared at different times, resulting in some discrepancies between layout as shown and descriptions.]
Case A. Mostly Predynastic (Stone Age). The pots are hand built. The flints are splendid specimens of the stone craft: as are the stone vases which were drilled with the bow-drill.
The oldest specimens are at the end of the case on the middle shelf near 22. They were given two years ago. Badarian: the culture, recently discovered, which was previous to the Predynastic. Date purely conjectural: 4000 B.C. is not an idiotic guess.
24. Flint knives 4000 BC. (e) is a grand specimen: look at its under surface. (a) has its gold handle: only two others such are known.
17. Predynastic arrow-heads.
26. Greek arrow-heads.
34. Middle Kingdom copper battle-axes with original handle of olive wood.
38. The oldest metal object in the Museum: 2nd Dynasty copper bowl made of hammered copper with moulded spout.
Case B. Much of it is Middle Kingdom. Wooden models and figures were put in tombs of those times, in the earnest hope that they would spring to life hereafter and save the man personal exertion.
4. The tomb statue of a local mayor, probably unrivalled of its kind.
1. Shell(?) head of a goddess, with blue glass inlay for hair and eyes, and red jasper(?) for ear-rings. `The Eton Goddess`. A lady of uncertain origin, but deliciously beautiful. Probably Syrian under Minoan influence.
11. Pieces of a model ebony throne.
14. Middle Kingdom razor, copper.
42. Adze, copper.
43. Axe, copper.
31. Model throw-stick. See wall-picture 4.
35, 36. Wooden dowels for holding horizontal courses of a building together.
33. Scribes` palettes, with ink-wells for different colours, and slots for pens.
38. Reserve head, 2500 B.C. This was placed in a tomb in case the tomb statue was destroyed and the soul be unable to find its home.
Case C. Miscellaneous, mostly of faience.
2 - 9. Shabtis with royal names, the middle one is Psammetichus.
71. Roman die of twenty sides.
34. Roman dice.
30. XVIIIth Dvnastv chessmen.
62a. XIIth Dynasty hippo.
98. XIIth Dynasty string doll with glazed beads for hair.
Case D. Faience and alabaster, mostly of the best period, XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties.
15. Head of Senusert of Middle Kingdom, glazed schist, wonderful.
16. Amenhotep II.
66, 76. Tubes for eye-paint with names of Amenhotep III.
Case E. Figured amulets with string holes for suspension.
10. XXIInd Dynasty cat with silver necklace and anklets.
15. Steatite hawk.
78. Bronze Osiris with glass eyes and chin-strap.
73. One is lapis lazuli, one is glass.
64-66. Wax models for bronze casting, cire perdue.
Case F. Roman faience.
Case G. Greek pottery. The big ones on the top are Bronze Age from the Cyclades, 2000 BC. The `candle-stick` was probably used for harvest offerings.
Case H. Roman glass and pottery, mostly from Cyprus.
Case I. Faience amulets for wrapping in murnmies. XXII-XXVI Dyn.
Case J. Jewellery.
1. Monumental scarab: the lion-hunt of Amenhotep III.
20. Bronze branding irons for sacred cattle of Ikhnaten.
33. Plaque with portrait of Tutankhamen.
41. XIIth Dynasty amethyst scarabs, one with gold hoop.
50. XIIth Dynasty gold pectoral of princess, the only one outside Cairo and New York.
43. Red jasper head for inlay in wall as inscription. XVIIIth Dynasty
44, 84 and 85. Lapis and glass.
Case K. Necklaces and amulets.
Case L. Faience and glass.
Case M. Painted plaster heads from coffins of Roman times.
Case N. Bronzes, mostly late Roman and from Coptic Churches.
Appendix
The Myers Museum, Eton College
Captain Edmond L Warre (Architect)
Museums Journal 43, no. 11 (February 1944), pp. 169-170
The Museum in which the Myers Collection of Egyptian antiquities is now displayed was built in 1935 through the generosity of Mr Millington Drake, the former Museum having become a Library, also his gift.
There is no need here to dilate on the reasons deciding the choice of the site, but the peculiarities of that site are relevant to a description of the building. The roof dictated a rectangular plan but the shape of the floor is considerably varied by the flat apse-like projection at the west end of the School Hall against which the Museum is placed (Pl. XI [= Exterior]). The long axis of the new building has a tangential relation to the apse-form, and it was found possible by close planning, to provide various niches and a curator`s study in the two areas outside the main rectangle, while on the west wall an ample windowed bow gave space for a table, indispensable for giant folios.
These features are, however, all subsidiary to the main dimensions, which were settled by a plan made of the existing cases containing the main exhibits.
The architect visited Cambridge to study the roof lighting of the Fitzwilliam gallery. Here, many of the pictures are glass-covered and the problem of eliminating the reflection of the spectator from the glazed surface while throwing full light upon the canvas itself has been solved by an unglazed area each side of the ridge with special lay-lighting in the rest of the ceiling. This arrangement, however, did not serve at Eton for the room had to be lit by night as well as by day. The scheme evolved was in fact the opposite of the Cambridge gallery. The outer part of the roof is tiled to the eaves, the gutter being of lead supported on a moulded course of stone, and the central strip, rather more than half the total area, is covered with reinforced glass. This skylight, none of which is seen from outside, runs from end to end where it is masked by gables in which louvred windows for ventilation play a part in the design and are surmounted by curved stone pediments. A distinctive yet unobtrusive effect in the brick wall faces is produced by 2 in. bricks which occur every four courses and are set in from the main surface about 3/4 in.
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Below the gable louvres there appears to the south the Eton arms on copper which came from the back of the fire-place of the former museum; and under the north louvre there is a window below which appears floral stone carving from the same source. Indeed, elaborate stonework, including columns with fine carved capitals, came in useful, notably on the outside of the passage leading to the new building.
The desire to give the collection an appropriate background was fulfilled by steps quite unforeseen.
As stated, the Museum was part of a scheme in which, though that building came first in point of time, it was secondary in importance to the Library on account of which the whole scheme had been initiated.
Thus when internal wall-covering was under debate the price for plastering a square foot of naked brick was computed to serve as a unit for comparison with other treatments. The price of this unit, which included painting, was ninepence. Plywood was then considered as an alternative. Fortunately a recent shipment of Queensland timber called "silky oak" was obtainable at tenpence in plywood of seventy by forty inches area.
The invention of plywood has opened up a fresh vista in the matter of internal wall decoration. Vertical slats or strip of deal are creosoted and plugged to the brickwork. The ply boards are placed to meet edge to edge where the prepared slats occur. At this juncture it required at Eton, where racing boats of cedar are made, no effort of imagination to use copper nails to secure perfect joints between successive ply boards. This expedient obviated the use of stiles or rails and left a clear area upon which framed exhibits could be spaced.
By a minimum, of staining and the application of beeswax a sandy red colour was produced which, diversified by the grain of the Queensland plywood, supplied an appropriate setting for the glazed cases and their contents.
The copper nails accorded well with their tawny surroundings and in the centre at the back of each ply board, where a pad of deal was placed to steady this flexible material, the nails were arranged in a pattern. In the absence of stiles and rails, such features as cornices, dado rails, and skirtings underwent interesting modification; their mouldings having small projection, less timber was used.
From a plain cornice in plaster at the top of the walls above the Queensland woodwork there springs a generous cove also of plaster. This group of mouldings runs without interruption from gable to gable occupying a third of the total ceiling area. The remainder is a glazed ceiling or lay-light divided into squares of two feet. Above this lay-light the skylight of reinforced glass covers in a space deep enough for a crouching man, and a small trolley carried on rails enables cleaning operations to be effectively carried out.
The artificial lighting of the Museum is contrived through the lay-light, the lamps being fixed to the structural limbers of the roof and so placed that by day no shadow from them is visible.
A few skirting plugs for standards with lengthy flexes complete the equipment.
The show-cases were of mahogany. These were easily scraped and made to tone with the Queensland woodwork. All the shelves in these` are of glass, so that the exhibits are bathed in light comparable to that of a bright spring day before the trees are in leaf. The new fitments such as frames and brackets are all made of Queensland wood in accord with the warm sand coloured background which had been aimed at from the outset as an appropriate setting for Egyptian antiquities.
[Note on the illustrations: EL Warre`s sketch of the exterior accompanied his published article; the ground plan and photographs of the display are preserved in the Myers Museum Archive and are reproduced here courtesy of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College.]
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Exterior
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Plan
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General view
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Case A
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Case A
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Case B
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Case B
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Case C
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Case C
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Case D
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Case D
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Case E
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Case E
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Case F
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Case F
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Case G
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Case G
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Case H
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Case H
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Case I
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Case I
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Case J
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Case J
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Case K
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Case K
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Case L
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Case L
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Case M
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Case N
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