Robert Hamilton Lang


Sir Robert Hamilton Lang, KCMG was a Scottish-born financier, diplomat and collector of antiquities.

Early life and career

A son of the Rev. Gavin Lang, parish minister at Glassford, Lanarkshire, Robert Hamilton Lang was born in Glassford manse in 1832. His ten siblings included John Marshall Lang later Moderator of the General Assembly of [the Church of Scotland].
He received his schooling at the famous Hamilton Academy from which he entered the University of Glasgow. Following graduation, Lang entered business and after a period posted in Beirut, was sent to Cyprus in 1861. In 1863 Lang was appointed manager of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Larnaca.
During his time in Cyprus, Lang also served as Acting Vice-Consul of Cyprus and as full Consul from 1871 'till his departure for Cairo in 1872, to run the bank's operations there. In 1875 Lang was appointed a director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Constantinople.
Lang was later appointed Director General of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, based in Constantinople, and was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1886. He retired in October 1902, when he was received by the Sultan who conferred upon him the Grand Cordon of the Order of Medjidie set in brilliants. Following his resignation, he moved back to Britain and settled in Dedham, Essex.

Excavations and collections

During his time on Cyprus Lang began acquiring antiquities, this leading to his own excavations around the villages of Dhali, in particular the site of ancient Idalion, and Pyla. In 1870 Lang loaned a collection of his Cypriot antiquities to the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow and in 1872, the British Museum purchased a major part of his remaining collection, with other parts going to the Louvre in Paris and to museums in Berlin.
Lang wrote an account of his excavations at the Idalion site, this published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, and a further account of his archaeological excavations in Cyprus in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

Later life and ecclesiastical family

Apart from his father having been a Church of Scotland minister, Robert Hamilton Lang's younger brother, the Very Rev Dr John Marshall Lang was a Church of Scotland minister, a Moderator of its General Assembly and Principal of the University of Aberdeen Robert Hamilton Lang's nephew, Cosmo Gordon Lang was to become Archbishop of York and latterly, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1928 to 1942. Another nephew was to be appointed Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1935–36.
Ill health precluded his attendance at the marriage of his second daughter in New York in 1911 and he died at Hampstead, London, in 1913.

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