For my birthday yesterday, I followed a friend’s grand tradition and took a day (mostly) off from work. I wanted to take advantage of the amazing variety of things to in my own backyard–Silicon Valley. So I dragged a friend off to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.
Cleopatra
This mid-sized museum specializes in all things Ancient Egyptian, complete with a replica tomb, hundreds of artifacts, and several honest-to-goodness human and animal mummies. An amazing educational resource, the Rosicrucian hosts school groups from all over the Bay Area. (I remember visiting both with school and with Girl Scouts when I was elementary-school age!) But the museum also welcomes adults, offering history and antiquity lovers a chance to spend hours contemplating the jewelry, sculpture, household goods, and history of the great Ancient Egyptian dynasties. The only places I’ve seen comparable Egyptian collections are the British Museum of London and the Louvre in Paris.
Mummies in museums have always bothered me–especially *these* mummies. I walk into the gallery and all the hair on the back of my neck stands up and prickles. Discovered and brought to the museum in the early 20th century, the Rosicrucian’s mummies have been partially or completely unwrapped. (That’s not done today, because of the damage it wreaks on the mummies.) One woman’s teeth are bared, while an Egyptian gentleman’s skin lays completely bare to curious eyes. The little girl remains wrapped, but her small body might be the most disturbing of all.
Psychically sensitive folk can have a rough experience in the Rosicrucian, though ghost hunters have found no official “hauntings” there.
So how did it happen that this world-class Egyptian collection sits in the quiet residential Rose Garden neighborhood in suburban San Jose? That’s an interesting story, especially if you read between the lines of the museum’s origins.
