FAMOUS SCIENTIST’S INTEREST IN EGYPTOLOGY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 72, 17 December 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

FAMOUS SCIENTIST’S INTEREST IN EGYPTOLOGY

Rouge That A Queen Used Centuries Ago

Deep beneath a Cavendish Square mansion is a strange and eerie collection of treasures. It represents the lifetime’s gleanings of Sir Robert Mond, famous archaeologist, uncle of the present Lord Melchett, who died in Paris recently, aged seventy-one, said an English journal. Sir Robert Mond created beneath his West End home a replica of a room in a palace of the Pharaohs. Famous artists copied the decorations and skilled designers reproduced the furniture of those days.

In thi s treasure house Sir Robert stored artistic gems which together represent one of the world’s finest, privately-owned collections of ancient Egyptian art. -Among these rare “finds" are statuettes of two young girls. One of them, made more than 5500 years ago, is a model of a maiden with sparkling eyes and long ringlets. The other i s the figure of a girl bending over her jar of beauty cream. In the jar were still traces of rouge. Centuries ago the jar and statuette stood upon the dressing Table of an Egyptian queen.

Sir Robert Mond, a son of the famous Ludwig Mond, one of the founders of the great chemical firm of Brunner, Mond and Co., which became Imperial Chemical Industries, was himself a great chemist. His own work in the realm of science included a number of researches into pure and applied chemistry, electrochemistry, and colour photography.

He wtrs a Fellow of six learned societies and a member of many others. He was president of the Egypt Exploration

Society, an ex-president of the Faraday Society, and treasurer of the Palestine Exploration Fund. His benefactions to scientific and philanthropic enterprises were frequent and generous. As a memorial to bis first wife (formerly Miss Helen Edith Levis), he founded the Infants’ Hospital in Vincent Square, Westminster.

Sir Robert discovered the secret of the beautiful blue dye which was used so often in early pottery and which had defied the efforts of modern craftsmen to reproduce. There was in his museum an old Egyptian vase of which some pieces were missing. Sir Robert had it repaired, and the reconstructed portions dyed with the new blue.

“It is so good,” he once said, "that people think the whole thing is a fake."

France niade him a Chevalier of the Legion d’Hoftneur and Belgium made .him an officer of. the Order of the Crown.

This was the man who once stated that he started his business life by taking midday dinner to his father and then washing up his test tubes. He worked in workshops, joineries and smithies until he graduated as a locomotive driver during his school days. Sir Robert Mond was one of the noted Jewish scientists and archaeologists who were asked to resign membership of the German Orient Society in July.

He replied that since the society’s council had unanimously decided that it should cease to be a scientific society he no longer wished fo toe associated with it.