Written by Julia Schulz

Biography

The clergyman Rev. Greville John Chester was born on October 25, 1830, in Norfolk. He is known for his numerous donations of ancient artefacts to the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, and other institutions which he collected during his numerous journeys around the globe.¹

He started travelling after he had retired from his parish in Sheffield in 1865. In poor health for a long time, he decided to spend more time in warmer regions. Chester’s first travels were to Italy, Egypt and North Africa, hereafter he spent two years in the West Indies and Americas. He frequently returned to Italy, Malta, Egypt and the Levant, particularly to Palestine and Syria, in the following years, but his favored place was Cairo as it was a popular spot for antiquities and manuscripts trade.²

Chester was a member in associations like the Royal Archaeological Institute³ and the Oxford Union debate society and carried out expeditions for the Palestine Exploration Fund.⁴

Relations with Other Archaeologists

Chester was acquainted with the Cairo-born Italian Egyptologist Rodolfo Vittorio Lanzone who was a collector of Arabic manuscripts and Egyptian antiquities, too, and presumably assisted Chester in some of his acquisitions.⁵ But Chester also helped others in buying antiquities, for instance, the Amateur Egyptologist and member of the Egypt Exploration Fund Anne Goodison with whom he used to travel together.⁶ Chester maintained a close relationship with the British Assyriologist Archibald Henry Sayce with whom he examined Greek inscriptions in Gebel el-Silsila between January and February of 1890.⁷

In his publication Seventy Years in Archaeology Flinders Petrie mentionsJohn Greville Chester and his part as a “notable figure in Egyptian matters”. Petrie and Chester were friends and used to travel together till the death of the latter in 1892.⁸

Chester and the British Museums

Most Chester’s artifacts were gifted to the Bodleian Library, the Oxford colleges and the Ashmolean Museum as well as the British Museum. Other objects he sold to institutions and collectors in order to finance his travels.⁹

His donations solely to the Ashmolean Museum amount to thousands of objects which is the reason why, a room in the Egyptian Galleries had been named after him.¹⁰ Donated objects exhibited in the Egyptian Rooms include pottery, textile fragments and part of a painted diptych which was procured from “Christian Coptic sources”.¹¹ Additionally, from 387 Hellenistic and Greek engraved gems hosted by the Ashmolean Museum 151 gems have a Chester provenance.¹² Regarding the British Museum it can be stated that Chester’s donations made a decisive contribution to the growth of the museum’s papyri collection, especially to the Byzantine period texts since his donations include many Greek fragments from the 5^th and 6^th century which were discovered in the Fayyum.¹³

The database of the British Museum indicates that 1207 objects were donated by and further 6887 bought from Chester.¹⁴ There are 107 entries with an Aswan/Syene provenance, for the major part Coptic ostraca, Roman terracotta fragments, lamps and vessels all dating from the Graeco-Roman and Coptic periods.¹⁵ The ostraca were most likely bought at Elephantine including one ostracon (see fig. 1) acquired in 1876 with Arabic stemming from the time after the Arab conquest of Egypt in 639-642.¹⁶

Chester continuously worked for the improvement of the museum and its collections and even took over the task to catalogue all Egyptian Antiquities hosted by the Ashmolean Museum between 1878 and 1879.¹⁷

Sources

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