Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson

Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson (29 July 1881 – June 1945), known as John to his friends, was an Irish surgeon, soldier, colonial administrator and collector, perhaps best known for his connection with Egypt and Egyptian antiquities. The Gayer-Anderson Museum in Cairo, and the Gayer-Anderson cat, an Ancient Egyptian bronze figurine of the goddess Bastet in the form of a cat, now in the collections of the British Museum, are both named after him.

Early life Gayer-Anderson was born, an identical twin with his brother Thomas, on 29 July 1881 at Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland. Their mother, Mary , was of Welsh descent and their father, Henry (1849-1927) was of Scottish descent. The twins were the youngest of the four children born to Mary and Henry and the family moved to Tonbridge in 1894 specifically so that the children could attend Tonbridge School as day-boys.

Gayer-Anderson began studying medicine at Guy's Hospital in London in 1898, when he was 17. After five years' study, he qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1903.

In 1924 Gayer-Anderson bought the late 14th-century medieval hall house Little Hall in Lavenham, Suffolk, England, and when his health began to fail in the mid-1930s, he considered moving there, and so sent many of his possessions on to Suffolk.

In February 1935 he visited the 16th-century Mamluk Beit al-Kretilya ("the House of the Cretan Woman"), two domestic buildings in Cairo that were undergoing restoration, and managed to secure a lifetime lease for them. He continued the restoration work, and furnished the rooms with his antiquities. In 1942 he returned to Lavenham to live there permanently, and gifted his lifetime lease of the house and its contents to the Egyptian nation. The house was then known as the Gayer-Anderson Pasha Museum of Oriental Arts and Crafts, following Gayer-Anderson's elevation to the title of Pasha by King Farouk in 1943. It is now known as the Gayer-Anderson Museum. Their two siblings were always known just as Anderson. Gayer-Anderson married and fathered a child but although Gayer-Anderson spent much of his life in Egypt, his wife and son, John, remained in Lavenham, together with his wife’s other children from an earlier relationship.

Gayer-Anderson died of a heart attack in June 1945. His ashes were buried in a 2nd-century Greek urn at St Peter and St Paul's Church, Lavenham. The Little Hall Museum in Lavenham displays some of the Gayer-Anderson brothers' collection.

Works (incomplete list) R.G. Gayer-Anderson, 1948. Christeros and other poems, Shrewsbury. Sulaiman al-Kretli, 1951. Legends of the Bait al-Kretliya as told by Sheikh Sulaiman al-Kretli, transl. R.G. 'John' Gayer Anderson, Ipswich.

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