Auction Catalogue

5 April 2006

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

Lot

№ 977

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5 April 2006

Hammer Price:
£1,200

Six: Major R. G. Gayer-Anderson Pasha, Royal Army Medical Corps, attached Egyptian Army

1914-15 Star (Capt., R.A.M.C.); British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf (Major); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; War Medal, nearly extremely fine (6) £200-250

Robert Greville Anderson (later Gayer-Anderson) was born on 28 July 1881, twin brother to Thomas Gayer Anderson (later Col. T. Gayer-Anderson, C.M.G., D.S.O., R.A.) and was commissioned Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps on 30 January 1904. He served at Gibraltar 1906-07, and was seconded to the Egyptian Army from 1907 to 1917, latterly as Assistant Adjutant General. During the war he served in Egypt, Gallipoli, and Arabia, and with the Arab Bureau as Political Officer with the Red Sea Patrol (wounded, despatches London Gazette 25 October 1916). He was awarded the Order of the Medjidie, 4th class (27 June 1913), Order of the Nile, 3rd class (21 April 1917), and Order of El Nahda, 3rd class (6 February 1922). According to his entry in Who’s Who he is also entitled to the Sudan medal with clasp for the Tagoi Punitive Expedition of 1910. He was present during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 and retired from the Army in 1920. He served subsequently in the Egyptian Government as a Senior Inspector in the Ministry of the Interior, and as Oriental Secretary at the Residency, Cairo, until he retired in 1924.

In 1935 Major R. G. Gayer-Anderson Pasha, long-term resident of Cairo and a British member of the Egyptian civil service, was permitted by the Egyptian Government to reside in one of the old Arab houses situated by the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. There were in fact two ancient residences, the Bayt al-Kritliyya dating from 1632 and the Beit Amna Bent Salim dating from 1540, in which he founded in 1937 the Gayer-Anderson Museum. During his residency in Bayt al-Kritliyya, Gayer-Anderson assembled collections of domestic furniture, carpets, historic artifacts and other objects representing the arts and crafts of Egypt, Islam and Central Asia. Among the objects acquired were almost 1,100 pieces of stamped glass [jetons], most in the shape of a coin with inscriptions in Arabic. He held the post of Sub-Commissioner (Midle East) British Red Cross Society and Order of St John of Jerusalem (War Organisation) from 1941 until 1942 when, owing to ill health, he was forced to leave Egypt. At this time he handed over to the Egyptian nation the Bayt al-Kritliyya as the Gayer-Anderson Museum of Oriental Arts and Crafts. In 1943 he was made Lewa (Major-General) with title of Pasha in the Egyptian Army. He died on 16 June 1945.