The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum (REM) is devoted to ancient Egypt, located at

Rosicrucian Park Rosicrucian Park is the headquarters of the English Grand Lodge for the Americas of the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, located in San Jose, California. History The Rosicrucian Park was established in 1927 by Harvey Spencer Lewis. It grew fr ...

in the

Rose Garden A rose garden or rosarium is a garden or park, often open to the public, used to present and grow various types of garden roses, and sometimes rose species. Most often it is a section of a larger garden. Designs vary tremendously and roses m ...

neighborhood of

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

, United States. It was founded by the

Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis (AMORC), also known as the ''Rosicrucian Order'', is the largest Rosicrucian organization in the world. It has various lodges, chapters and other affiliated bodies throughout the globe, operating in ...

(AMORC). The

Rosicrucian Order Rosicrucianism is a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts purported to announce the existence of a hitherto unknown esoteric order to the world and made seeking its ...

continues to support and expand the museum and its educational and scientific activities. The museum holds the largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the Western United States,Rachael Myrow
What Is the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Why Is It in San Jose?
''Kqed.org'', 13 July 2017 and is located next to the Rosicrucian headquarters.

History

The founder of AMORC,

Harvey Spencer Lewis Harvey Spencer Lewis F.R.C., S:::I:::I:::, 33° 66° 95°, PhD (November 25, 1883 – August 2, 1939), a noted Rosicrucian author, occultist, and mystic, was the founder in the US and the first Imperator of the Ancient and Mystical Order Ros ...

, was a collector of various artifacts with mystical symbolism, some of them from the East. His very first artifact was a small

Sekhmet In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet ( or Sachmis (), also spelled Sakhmet, Sekhet, Sakhet among other spellings, cop, Ⲥⲁⲭⲙⲓ, Sakhmi), is a warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing. She is depicted as a lioness. Sekhmet is a solar de ...

statue. In 1921 he contributed financially to the archaeological excavations at

Tel el Amarna Amarna (; ar, العمارنة, al-ʿamārnah) is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site containing the remains of what was the capital city of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The city was established in 1346 BC, built at the direction of the Ph ...

(Akhetaten, the capital city of the 18th dynasty pharaoh

Akhenaten Akhenaten (pronounced ), also spelled Echnaton, Akhenaton, ( egy, ꜣḫ-n-jtn ''ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy'', , meaning "Effective for the Aten"), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning or 1351–1334 BC, the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dy ...

) of the Egypt Explorations Society of Boston by receiving donations from AMORC members. In return, the Egypt Explorations Society donated several Egyptian antiquities to AMORC. In 1928, he presented to the public a collection named "The Rosicrucian Egyptian Oriental Museum", located at the administration buildings of AMORC at

. Supposedly, the San Jose location was chosen because of the affordability of the land back then. After Lewis' tour in Egypt in 1929, AMORC received many more artifacts and donations, and as a result the collection grew significantly, with more than 2000 exhibits. The second Imperator of AMORC,

Ralph Maxwell Lewis Ralph Maxwell Lewis (February 14, 1904 - January 12, 1987), the son of Harvey Spencer Lewis, was the Imperator of Rosicrucian organisation, the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), from 1939 to 1987. He is the author of a number of books r ...

, son of H. Spencer Lewis, built new buildings for the museum, which opened in November 1966. By that time the museum was unique in: * Having the largest exhibition of Ancient Egyptian antiquities in the Western US. * Being the only such museum in the world with buildings constructed in Ancient Egyptian architectural style. * Having a purpose-built

planetarium A planetarium ( planetariums or ''planetaria'') is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. A dominant feature of most planetarium ...

adjacent to the museum, the fifth opened in the United States, and the first with a Star Projector built in the country, constructed by H. Spencer Lewis. * Having its buildings set in an

Egyptian Revival Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and Admiral Nelson's defeat ...

park. In 1995, Julie Scott, M.A., S.R.C., who is a practicing Rosicrucian, became director of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. File:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum grounds 2.JPG, Rosicrucian Museum grounds File:Rosicrucian_Egyptian_Museum_grounds2.jpg, Rosicrucian Museum grounds File:Rosicrucian_Egyptian_Museum_grounds3.jpg, Rosicrucian Museum grounds File:Rosicrucian_Egyptian_Museum_grounds4.jpg, Rosicrucian Museum sign In 2017, the museum was claiming 110,000 visitors per year, including 26,000 sixth-graders. The building is also used by the Rosicrucians for meditation and group discussions. In 2018, the museum became a

zero-energy building A Zero Energy Building (ZEB), also known as a Net Zero Energy (NZE) building, is a building with net zero energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy c ...

Notable exhibits

A notable activity took place in 1999 when the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum started the traveling exhibition "Women of the Nile" accompanied by many lectures. "Women of the Nile" travelled across the United States of America and Canada, and continued until 2001. In 2000–2002, a stone figure of

Cleopatra VII Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler.She was also a ...

from the collection was displayed in Rome, London, and Chicago in similar exhibitions. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum's child

mummy A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay fu ...

traveled to

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in nearby

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

on May 6, 2005 to be studied under CT scans and other high-resolution methods of remote sensing, in a collaboration between the museum,

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

, and

Hospital and the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Biocomputational Lab. The results were released at the 75th Anniversary of the Museum on August 6, 2005, with detailed scans. One of the scanning images won the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge 2006 co-sponsored by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

and ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

''. In November 2017, x-ray images of the mummy were released that provide a 3D visualization of the girl's remains. A statue of

Taweret In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret (also spelled Taurt, Tuat, Tuart, Ta-weret, Tawaret, Twert and Taueret, and in Greek, Θουέρις – Thouéris, Thoeris, Taouris and Toeris) is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and f ...

, the ancient Egyptian

hippopotamus The hippopotamus ( ; : hippopotamuses or hippopotami; ''Hippopotamus amphibius''), also called the hippo, common hippopotamus, or river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extan ...

-like

goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...

of pregnant women and childbirth, once stood at the entrance, but has been moved to the side. Since 2004, the Museum has been completely renovated, with the following Gallery themes: *

Afterlife The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving ess ...

and Rock Cut Tomb *Daily Life and Other Cultures *

Kingship King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

and

Palace A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...

(

) and

Amarna Amarna (; ar, العمارنة, al-ʿamārnah) is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site containing the remains of what was the capital city of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The city was established in 1346 BC, built at the direction of the Ph ...

period *Rotating Exhibits: Since 2015: The Rosicrucian Alchemy Exhibit File:Mummy-UpperClassEgyptianMale-SaitePeriod RosicrucianMuseum.png , An upper-class Egyptian male, often referred as " Usermontu" File:Early 18th dynasty coffin REM RC 1678 1.JPG , Early 18th dynasty coffin File:Baboon mummy at Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.JPG, Baboon mummy. There is in fact no baboon inside, the mummy is formed around a ceramic jar. The museum also holds a 1.5 million year old stone hand ax, but it is not exhibited to the public.Jessica Yadegaran
Date Night: Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose
''Mercurynews.com'', 21 February 2014

Rock-cut tomb replica

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum contains a composite replica of an ancient Egyptian

rock-cut tomb A rock-cut tomb is a burial chamber that is cut into an existing, naturally occurring rock formation, so a type of rock-cut architecture. They are usually cut into a cliff or sloping rock face, but may go downward in fairly flat ground. It was a ...

, based on photos and sketches taken by Rosicrucian expeditions to tombs at

Beni Hasan Beni Hasan (also written as Bani Hasan, or also Beni-Hassan) ( ar, بني حسن) is an ancient Egyptian cemetery. It is located approximately to the south of modern-day Minya in the region known as Middle Egypt, the area between Asyut and Mem ...

, in order to give the guests the experience of being in such an excavation. Below are photographs of the interior of the replica tomb, largely containing scenes from the ''

Book of the Dead The ''Book of the Dead'' ( egy, 𓂋𓏤𓈒𓈒𓈒𓏌𓏤𓉐𓂋𓏏𓂻𓅓𓉔𓂋𓅱𓇳𓏤, ''rw n(y)w prt m hrw(w)'') is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom ...

''. The dark interior of the tomb replica is evident. Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 1.jpg Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 2.jpg Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 3.jpg Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 4.jpg Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 5.jpg Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 6.jpg Image:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 7.jpg File:Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum 11.JPG File:Rock cut tomb.JPG

The Rosicrucian Alchemy Exhibit

Beginning in 2015, for the 100th Anniversary of the incorporation of AMORC in America, which owns and operates the Museum, the museum's Rotating Exhibits Gallery became The Rosicrucian

Alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

Exhibit. The highlights of the collection were put on display in this exhibit. This exhibit, curated by the alchemist Dennis William Hauck, features a journey through the seven stages of the alchemical process, a meditation chamber featuring the Azoth of the Philosophers and a recorded guided meditation, and a full-size reproduction of an alchemist’s workshop. There is also a reproduction of the Ripley Scroll with illustrative commentary. The Exhibit forms the kernel of what will be the first alchemy museum in the United States, and the largest in the world. It will be housed in the present "Rose-Croix University International" building at

. The RCUI Building also contains a working alchemy lab.

References

External links