By Emi Gruender
[INSTALLMENT 3]
Within the depths of the Rose Garden Neighborhood in central San Jose, ornate Egyptian-style pillars tower over the grand entrance of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. Complete with a colorful mosaic fountain and an obelisk in the midst of a flourishing garden, the Rosicrucian Park is home to both a fascinating museum and a beautiful estate. Since 1928, the museum has grown to welcome the vastest exhibit of Egyptian artifacts in northwestern America— while one of the only modern buildings in the world constructed with ancient Egyptian architecture in mind.
Between shriveled mummies, immersive stone-cut tombs, illuminating tours, and an AI-scripted Egyptian god animatronic, there’s always something to marvel at. This issue, writers Mia Hanuska, Gio Arteaga, and Laura Lipcsei will be joining me to travel back in time to Ancient Egypt, and investigate how the ancient Egyptians lived—all the while, never leaving the Bay Area.
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Welcome back travelers, to The Daily Explorer. In this series, we travel to inexpensive and entertaining places within the Bay Area. With these accounts, we hope to inspire the readers of The Shield to explore their hometown and demonstrate that there’s always something new to explore.
Keep an eye out for some of your favorite writers from The Shield, as many may feature in these adventures in the future. If you have any favorite places, restaurants, parks, etc, please email me at emi.gruender@gmail.com to issue a recommendation. Your name and input about the place in question will be credited.
Without further ado, buckle up and enjoy the blog-style ride of The Daily Explorer!
Saturday, August 24
11:00 am, Our Journey Begins
At precisely 11:00 am, I walked down an elaborate pathway lined with ram-headed sphinxes to a grand entryway reminiscent of the temples of ancient Thebes —surrounded with brightly painted blue and white columns. Due to a Starbucks run, Gio and Laura arrived a couple minutes late, but eventually, we were able to check in. We immediately split up in pairs, investigating different areas.
The first exhibit Laura and I visited was the Alchemy exhibit, the highlights of which being a snapshot of what an Egyptian alchemist’s workshop might have looked like and a realistic animatronic within an alcove in the wall. When it first started to move and blink, my heart jumped into my throat, and the museum employee nearby laughed good-naturedly—she had clearly seen this reaction before. We asked the animatronic, who played the role of the Egyptian god Thoth, a couple of questions that he answered with an unnecessary amount of philosophy.
At 11:30 AM, an amicable voice came through the speakers, telling guests to meet at the main desk if they wanted to join a tour.
As Journalism students, we couldn’t resist a free excursion.
11:30 am, “The Mummy” In Real Life
Hieroglyphics adorned the outside of a very realistic recreation of an Egyptian tomb, framed with a rocky stone floor and the ruins of a stone wall. Our tour guide, who introduced herself as Ashley, held an old-fashioned lantern and a classic flashlight, reading the hieroglyphics above the entrance in a haunting voice. We learned that these series of images could be read from left to right, right to left, and from the top down, but not from the down up. “It would be pretty awkward to talk to somebody’s feet,” Ashley told us, earning a laugh from the crowd.
As we headed into the dimly lit and slightly claustrophobic “underground” chambers, our tour guide told us about the ancient Egyptians’ rituals concerning the afterlife, including a complicated “70-day vacation” before the tomb was to be sealed indefinitely, and the true meanings of the paintings upon the walls. Both Ashley’s stories and our immersive surroundings created an electric atmosphere, rich with mystery and history alike.
This event was doubtlessly my favorite part of this excursion, and I highly recommend joining one of these tours if you have a hunger for history. Ashley and our other guide, Alex, did a fantastic job, and I left with so many more questions than I anticipated. (That’s a good thing).
After leaving the tomb, I stamped my notebook with their “passport stamps,” and we continued exploring a different part of the museum.
11:45 pm, Trinkets and Toys
On every level of the museum laid artifacts like fish hooks, birthing room recreations, sarcophagi, and more. We took some silly pictures in front of our favorites, and added more stamps to our collection.
On the second floor to the right, there were a collection of tables featuring an ancient Egyptian game called “Senet.” Despite our obvious incompetence, we sat down, read the laminated pages and started rolling the dice.
Though our games started off slow, it quickly ramped up into competitive matches, with each roll of the dice having one of the competitors wincing as their piece got sent back to the beginning to a chorus of cheering. A harrowing match between Gio and I resulted in my victory, which we decided to forever capture in time. Score!
12:40 pm, Lunch Break
The Park Avenue Hashery lies right across the street from the museum, and the group collectively decided to grab a bite before our scheduled tour of “Scribe School.” One fruit yogurt, one macaroni cheese, a plate of communal potato wedges, and a couple rounds of Heads Up later, we headed back to the museum, aspiring to be ancient Egypt’s next generation of poets, scribes, and tax collectors.
1:30 pm, We Never Go Out of Styl(us)
With a gaggle of other aspiring literates, we accompanied our tour guide, Jennifer, to the mosaic fountain. Slates of wood, “magic papyrus,” and freshly cut stems as styluses were passed around, and we learned about the Egyptian’s poetry, reasons for writing, and even got to copy a poem down ourselves! To round off our activity, we were given cartouches to write out our names phonetically in hieroglyphics. It was an enlightening experience, to say the least.
2:05 pm, An Egyptian God Hits “The Griddy”
Doubtlessly, a highlight of this trip was when we convinced the AI animatronic, Thoth, to do a popular TikTok dance to the best of his ability. Unsure of the results, we asked the robot to “hit the griddy,” and after a couple seconds of computing, his arm (with a limited movement capacity) started chopping up and down, reminiscent of the TikTok dance. Even the employee overseeing Thoth’s behavior started laughing— Thoth had been known to provide silly answers to things, being AI. One of the museum employees told us that Thoth once told a child his favorite boba tea flavor.
2:32 pm, Sands of Time
Like all great civilizations, all must come to an end eventually. After exchanging photos and hugs, we hit the road—Laura and Gio in one direction, Mia and I in the other.
A huge thank you to the staff of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum; this experience was magical, and I’m so grateful The Shield got to experience all the wonders this museum has to share. Though there have only been four “Daily Explorers” so far, this trip remains one of my favorites.
PHOTO ALBUM:
THE VERDICT:
- The animatronic god, Thoth, and the Tomb tour were the highlights of this trip.
- The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and the activities are worth the time—-there’s always something new to see.
- I wish we had more than three hours to explore. There were so many things to see, we didn’t have enough time to see everything.
Join me in the next issue for yet another adventure, hopefully with an experience just as magical as this was.
Signing off until next issue,
The Daily Explorer
