Field trip

It occurred to me a few days ago as we read a book on Mummies and Pharaohs and Pyramids that we have a museum dedicated to Ancient Egypt just 15 or so miles away. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. So today we went on a little field trip :)

It's a pretty cool place. We saw real mummies and sacrophagi and canopic jars and artifacts from daily life, as well as replicas of pieces like the bust of Nefertiti and the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun (whose name Sayer remembered without prompting :). They had an underground room designed to look like the inside of a burial chamber, with loads of paintings on the walls. Among the paintings there was one showing Osiris looking on as Anubis led a soul to be judged. There was a scale with a heart on one side and a feather on the other, and a monster waiting to devour the heart if it proved sinful, with Thoth looking on and recording notes on the judging. When I pointed the scene out to Sayer she told me the story to go along with it. She was keen on the tomb portion of the museum, and wanted to go through it again. As Duncan had been asleep in the sling the first time through, we went again. Duncan also enjoyed it, and asked to go again. So we did :)

The museum also had an area devoted to neighboring civilizations during the ancient Egyptian times, so we also saw lots of small clay tablets with cuneiform writing, replicas of Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian art, and the obelisk containing Hammurabi's code. Poke me. Maybe one day I'll manage to post pictures.