The Classical Museum was founded in 1910 as a teaching museum for Classics at University College. The original collection was largely assembled by the Rev. Henry Browne in the course of ten years through gifts from or exchanges with larger museums (particularly the Ashmolean and the British Museum). The collections include Minoan, Mycenaean and Cypriot artefacts, Greek vases, Greek and Roman coins, terracottas, Roman pottery and glass, bronze and bone objects of daily life, Egyptian antiquities and some papyri. The most significant later acquisitions consist of a marble sarcophagus and a collection of Roman and Greek funerary marble stelai with inscriptions, once owned by Sir George Cockburn. The collection was bought by the School of Classics in 1936 at the sale of the contents of Cockburn’s former residence: Shanganagh Castle, Bray, Co. Dublin.