Museum of Ancient Egypt in San Jose

The largest collection of mummies and Egyptian artifacts of the West Coast is located in the residential area of San Jose, across the street of Hoover High School. It was founded by the Order of the Rosicrucians during the flowering of Egyptomania. The items were collecting from 1915 to 1927. In 1928, the museum was founded. Forty years later, a new building in the Egyptian style was erected. Now, the collection is located here. 

The Egyptian Rosicrucians Museum includes a planetarium and research library. Close to it, there are the headquarters of the Order and the Egyptian park. The museum was designed as an educational center telling about Egyptian history and religion.

The museum is keeping 4,000 exhibits. Household items, tableware, jewelry, clothes, pieces of pyramids. You can learn how Egyptians were living – what time did they get up, what did they wear and eat, what hairstyles did they make, what makeup did they use. You can see tools presumably used to build the famous pyramids. The guides tell you more about the burial rite of Egyptian pharaohs or offer you to make the mummy. Of course, you can find true mummies under the glass: four humans, cats, sharks, and other animals.

A collection of antiquities is exhibited in several thematic galleries. Some of them are afterlife and tombs, everyday life and connections with other cultures, rulers and palaces, temples and religion, alchemy of the Rosicrucians. The museum even has a recreated Egyptian tomb in a rock. 

According to these materials, archaeologists, art critics, and designers “built” an exact copy of the ancient ruins. This exhibit allows you to feel you a researcher and gain experience in excavations. On the walls of the tomb, you can see scenes from the Book of the Dead.