Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology
the Ure Museum is the fourth most important collection of Greek ceramics in Britain, after those of the
British, Ashmolean and Fizwilliam Museums. It is named after Proffessor P.N. Ure, the first Professor
of Classics at Reading (1911 to 1946), and his wife and former pupil Annie D. Ure, curator of the
Museum until her death in 1976. Between them, the Ures published three books, based on their
excavations at Rhitsona in Boeotia, the Homeric Mycalessus, which are still essential reference works
for the typology and cronology of Boeotian, Attic and Corinthian pottery, as well as over fifty articles
on Greek pottery in general and a volume in the prestigious internationl series Corpus Vasorum
Antiquorum (1954) containing about half the present colection in the Museum.
It is hard to say when the Museum started. In 1909 Reading University College was given by
Mrs Flinders Petrie a collection of Egyptian antiquities, and a similar gift was made in 1910
by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Percy Ure arrived in 1911, already possessing
a small collection of vases bought cheaply on the Continent, and a remarcable quanity of sherds
he had picked up on various Greek sights, including material jet tisoned by tomb-robbers as
vvorthless in the bushes around the Rhitsona excavations. In 1913 the Collage was given a
sizeable collect ion of Cypriot antiquities (see case 2) by a Mrs. Barry, a relative of Alfred
Palmer (of the biscuit firm), a notable benefactor of the College. she had been in Cyprus with
her huzbund, Quarentine Superintendent and Sanitary Comissioner for the island, in the
1880s, while excavations major were going on in Salamis, and had acquired and - as was still
possible then - brought home a quantity of objects. In the following year, the British Museum
gave Ure some 'uncon sidered trifles' - more than 100 small vases and sherds.
In 1922, the desicion was taken formally to establish a departmental museum, as an aid to the teaching
of Ancient History and Greek Archaeology, and even to purchase vases for it from the annual
departmental grant. One particularly important series of purchases was the 'Copais collection', of
mainly Attic and Boeotian pottery, amassed in Greece by a Mrs Steele who had worked with the
company that drained Lake Copais in the twenties.
Over the years, the Museum has owed a good deal to benefactors. twice the Friends of the University made grants
to enable the purchase of important vases. The first, in 1928, made it possible to buy in London a large hydria
(water jug) in Attic black figure, sho
wing four young Athenians setting out with their horses for a day's hunting. It was the first really good
quality vase acquired by the Museum, and would have been beyond its reach but for the generosity of
the Friends In 1956 a unique lekane (large shalow bowl) in black-figure, made in Eretria in Euboea,
was bought in Germany with the help of a second grant by the Friends.