The Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, California
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San Jose’s Rosicrucian Museum, an 81-year-old institution with more than 150,000 visitors annually, is home to the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on the West Coast and is the only museum in the world to be designed in ancient Egyptian architectural style.
Holding more than 4,000 artifacts, the Rosicrucian Museum is also the North American headquarters of the Rosicrucian Order, an organization that teaches philosophical thought to its students, rooted in the teachings of ancient Egyptian mystery schools.
The museum’s tomb, created in 1935, is a replica that closely emulates tombs from Egypt’s Beni Hasan desert. Cold air fills the passageways as visitors walk through the cave-like entrance and stumble upon the coffin. The walls are lined with hieroglyphics and scenes from the Book of the Dead, depicting the scenes of judgment that the dead will face before entering the afterlife.
In addition, four mummified bodies are on display in glass cases, including a child mummy that recently went through a CT scanner at the Stanford NASA Biocomputation Center. More than 60,000 X-ray images allowed scientists, without removing the wrappings from her body, to determine her age, gender and various details about her life.
The Rosicrucian Museum also has a planetarium on its grounds, among a Rosicrucian research library and several vegetation gardens, meant to reflect the beauty of the Nile River Basin.
Excerpted from an article by Laura Riparbelli for Mercury News
A visit is thoroughly recommended!
Kate