The Lawrence Room Committee works to keep the catalogue up to date. To report glitches, make suggestions or for further information, please contact: lawrenceroom@girton.cam.ac.uk
Since its foundation, Girton has acquired a wide range of important artefacts and antiquities, often from its benefactors and supporters as well as from its own grounds. In 1934, a dedicated college museum to house its growing collections was created in the memory of Amy Lawrence (Girton 1891) and has since been known as the Lawrence Room. In addition to Roman and Anglo-Saxon cemetery material excavated from the Girton Sites (108 items), the two main sections of the museum are the Egyptian collection mainly put together by Gwendolen Crewsdon in 1905 (705 items) and the Mediterranean material (243 items), the gifts of the de Saumarez family, Ethelwyn Pearson, Alice Carthew, and Lucy and Geoffrey Chandler. Hermione, Girton's portrait mummy, came to the college in 1911. Mesopotamian material (18 items) is joined by 6 items from the Far East and a small miscellaneous category of material from other areas (10 items), such as the Maori fishbooks given through Caroline M. Ridding.
Besides through the section names highlighted to the left, you can search the catalogue by category (e.g. amulet, container, figure, funerary object, jewellery, religious equipment), by object name (e.g. brooch, mummy, jar, scarab, shabti, tweezers) or even by LR number (e.g. LR.1 gives Hermione). Try searching for different materials (e.g. clay, flint, glass, metal, stone, terracotta, wood) or, to investigate the history of the collection, by the name of donors (see left, plus many others). Both periods and dates are provided. Countries occurring in the catalogue include Egypt, England, Greece, Iraq, Italy and Syria; towns include Aswan, Athens, Cairo, Cambridge, Carthage and Rome. The museum contains objects dating from the Egyptian Palaeolithic, from the fourth (middle-late Uruk period, Predynastic) and third (Early Bronze Age) millennia through to the nineteenth century AD (AD 1801-1900). BC or AD always precede dates. In the Egyptian section, dynasties are given with Roman numbers (e.g. Dynasty XII); Persian period, Ptolemaic and Coptic follow. In the Mediterranean section, try searching under Bronze Age, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic or Roman. If the search result does not bring up your search term highlighted, you may need to View Full Record.