The
Egyptian Museum, San Jose, CA
EGYPT THE ETERNAL IN SAN JOSE
by
Bruce Burnett
The
great historian and philosopher, Will Durant, complained that most of
us spend too much time on the last 24-hours and too little time on the
last 6,000 years.
It is ironic that in the heart of California's Silicone Valley, whose
industry is devoted very much to the future, there is an edifice honoring
the 6,000-year-old civilization of the early Egyptians.
Mankind's earliest great civilization developed about 6,000 years ago
in the fertile Nile Valley. Because the soil was so bounteous those
early Egyptians had time to think.
This social laboratory gave birth to mathematics, writing, music, art
and architecture. An early Egyptian Pharaoh also first propounded monotheism.
The Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California, dates from 1932 and is
a project of the Rosicrucian Order, which has its world headquarters
and administrative center in the city.
The museum, the only one in the world of authentic Egyptian design,
including the Cairo Museum, grew from the private collection of Dr.
H. Spencer Lewis, executive director for the Rosicrucian Order in the
early thirties. By 1966 the collection had grown considerably and the
modern building was opened to the public. Since then, the Rosicrucian
Egyptian Museum has become San Jose's most popular tourist attraction,
boasting over 300,000 visitors annually.
The museum contains a remarkable collection of genuine antiquities.
There are scarabs, jewels, amulets and the mummified remains of humans,
cats, birds and the head of a bull.
The word "mummy" is believed to be derived from an Arabic
word meaning "bitumen" or "bitumized things". Bitumen
was one of the ingredients in the embalming or mummifying process which
reveals the surprising knowledge the Egyptians had of anatomy and chemical
compounds.
The sarcophagi (mummy coffins) of the Egyptians tell us a great deal
about their religion and day-to-day life. They believed that an immortal
life force entered a person's body at birth. It was called Ka
and was an inner guide, or what we would call a conscience.
At death the Ka was liberated and went to the hereafter along with the
soul. In the afterlife the Ka would live an earthlike existence,
possessing many of its earthly treasures.
They believed that Ka would eventually return to live in the
body. Eternal Houses or pyramids were erected to preserve the body and
store possessions. Placed in these tombs were not only beautiful vases,
necklaces, rings, gold platters, glass utensils, alabaster statuary,
bronze weapons and elaborately carved furniture, often inlaid with gold,
but the walls were painted in pictures and hieroglyphics depicting the
accomplishments and events of the deceased's life. These murals are
very informative, for they show how the fields were planted and tilled,
how grapes were pressed for wine and how the craftsmen of the time used
their tools. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum contains a superb replica
of such a tomb, complete with a detailed mural. A study of the construction
of sarcophagi shows that as early as 3,000BC the carpenters of Egypt
knew the structural art of lamination - using the great cedars of Lebanon.
In addition to the genuine artifacts, the museum houses a sculpted copy
of the golden inner sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamen and a three-quarter
size reproduction of the famous obelisk erected in Heliopolis, near
Cairo, in 2,700BC by Userten 1. Also to be seen is a replica of the
Rosetta Stone. Found by one of Napoleon's officers in 1799, the inscription
is in both Egyptian hieroglyphic and ancient Greek and was thus a key
in the translation of the enigmatic picture language.
The museum also contains artifacts from the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian
civilizations. Adjacent to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum is the Rosicrucian
Planetarium and Science Museum.
San Jose is 75 kilometers (45 miles) south of San Francisco and well
worth visit if you are in the area.
The
Egyptian Museum, San Jose, CA
EGYPT THE ETERNAL IN SAN JOSE
was
first published in the Regina Leader-Post
