Visit Ancient Egypt! It's here in California (plus secret giveaway)

Yesterday we talked about Ben & Jerry's in Vermont, now we move to Ancient Egypt...in California.

The Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose has a stellar collection of ancient artifacts, including, yes, mummies, and even a wonderful walk-through replica tomb in the basement. The tomb's of such length (three rooms) that younger children will balk, but then feel proud of themselves--perhaps on the second visit!-- when they penetrate into the inner sanctum. The guided tours at the museum are fantastic, but I also recommend going into the tomb without others around, so you can almost convince yourself that it's all real.

Amazing factoid: This is the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in Western North America.

Extras: you can purchase a passport to stamp as you move through the exhibit halls.

The museum also offers a few short classes throughout the day. We sat down for a great one about cosmetics and perfumes. It's fascinating to know what Cleopatra did to smell great! She perfumed the sails of her boat so Mark Antony would fall in love with her before she even set foot on shore. We also learned how Nefertiti got those fabulous eyebrows. 

Look at this sarcophagus of Disure, an 18th Dynasty priest and scribe. I guarantee you're going to scroll back up to look at it more closely after you read my text below the photograph. 

 

Notice the fully erect guy raring to go? Museums should organize an exhibit called Sex on the Sarcophagus and get Sarah Jessica Parker as a guest presenter.

I'll be kind and give you a close-up, you lascivious person!

You can notice how the image appears scraped in that...er....area. According to the plaque, one of the presumably Victorian owners of the coffin was offended by the sexual nature of the image, tried to dig it out, and only succeeded in making it more prominent.

For Dan Brown fans, it may be interesting to know that the museum was founded by the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), a mystical society begun in the U.S. in 1915 but dating to ancient times with a connection to Freemasonry. There's no hard sell, or even soft, for the Order, just a small display in the entry hall.

A newer addition is a wonderful Alchemy exhibit. For those interested in the history of medicine (and magic!), this exhibit contains a mock medieval laboratory and several displayed manuscripts, including one that stretches out over eight feet. The Rosicrucian plans to turn this into a full-on museum, which will be the largest such collection in the world. Once up and running, this area will have alchemical workstations for up to 12 students.

You can even sign 5-17 year olds up for the Junior Archeologist training program, which involves "behind the scenes training, hands-on learning opportunities, and the most fun graduation ceremony this side of the Nile!" It's free with any Friend of the Museum Family Membership.

Fascinating facts like this abound in the alchemical room

Did I mention the planetarium?

The gardens and placid walkways?

Across the street is a school of some architectural interest, the Herbert Hoover Middle School.

The chance to play the ancient game of Senet with game pieces writ large?

We enjoyed playing it so much I considered building a similar outsized Senet in our yard at home.

And perhaps best of all for beleaguered Bay Area parkers? The museum hosts a huge, free parking lot.

If you have an Egyptophile in your life, this museum is a must. 

I am the Egyptophile in my life

 I'll end, as is always appropriate, with canopic jars.

If these canopic jars look familiar, post in the comments below, and tell how you recognize them. I'll send a copy of my novel The Murderer's Maid (to anyone in the U.S.) selected randomly from the correct commenters!

Updated: a lot of people are visiting here but no one is making a guess! Here's a huge hint. Think of the biggest tomb discovery in history (it was memorialized in a Steve Martin song in the 1980s...the grave inhabitant's nickname is only three letters, spelled the same forwards as backwards, a palindrome... the nickname can also be repeated twice to be an old-fashioned, British scolding...)

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Raiders of the Lost Ark

4: my favorite number. Coincidence? I think not.

**NOTE: there are plot spoilers, but I am unapologetic. This movie is 33 years old!

This week I had the incredible pleasure of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen again, for the first time since 1981. Of course, I've viewed it multiple times since on TV and with rentals, but it had been a really, really long time since I'd seen it, and thus I watched it with very fresh eyes.

When my Dad took us to see this movie in 1981, I thought based on the title that it was going to be a movie about football. I can still recall my excitement when it dawned on me that it was a movie about archeology. I purchased the novelization and am kicking myself I don't have it today. I pored over that book like nobody's business. In the scene in the movie when Indy draws the sunbeam coming through the headpiece of the staff of Ra, and his chalk pulls so decisively on the flimsy portable chalkboard, I felt a visceral memory: that sound.


This movie holds up.

It's not dated. It feels like something wonderful the studios released last week.

I'm in awe of the storytelling. It's so well-plotted. For instance, the very first thing we learn about Marion Ravenwood is that she can drink large men under the table. That comes into play later when she tries to use that skill to extract herself from Belloq. (It's always bothered me that she doesn't wait until he's completely nodded out; he could so easily raise an alarm even as drunk as he is--but then Toht shows up so it's all moot anyway.) We learn right away that Indy doesn't like snakes...and so of course his climactic moment from which escape seems absolutely impossible also involves snakes. They are the hot fudge on the trouble sundae. We learn in an offhand reference that Indy and Marion like to eat dates. The dates later cause a mild panic in us, as we watch Indy carry a poisoned one around, thinking aloud as he delays eating it.

I wanted to be Marion Ravenwood. Perhaps this is why I'm so fond of Ravenswood wine. :) I could go on at length about Marion and how she shaped my ideas of what a strong woman is, but that's a post for another day.

I'd like to talk briefly about what it's like as a writer to watch a story on the big screen and try to dissect it on the fly for why/how the plot works. This movie has a wonderful ongoing motif: briefly having something and losing it. Besides the obvious triad of Belloq consistently grabbing things Indiana has procured at great trouble and danger to himself, there's the man at the very beginning, about to land a big fish by the way his line is bending ... but he must throw the entire reel into the river to start up the plane for Indiana. There's the fact that Toht temporarily has the headpiece, and that his hand bears its emblem albeit inadequately (I love that detail the most, I think, of any plot device in the movie. How brilliant is that??!! "And then deduct one for Allah"....oh my God: organic, credible, and game-changing.) I watched the movie most definitely as someone enjoying being entertained, but I also mentally kept track of how the scenes keep fortifying the story, each one moving the plot forward in demonstrable ways. There's nothing wasted in this movie. (well, maybe some of the kissing--but that added immeasurably to my enjoyment!) Then there's the idea that Indy and Marion once had each other.

I could go on and on for a long time, but wanted to keep this short. I so much appreciate this movie, and I thank Cinemark for including it in their summer classic movies queue.

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Package for Indiana Jones

I'm coming to this late and some of you may have already seen this...

Someone sent a package to the University of Chicago addressed to Henry Walton Jones, Jr. The label is typed and of a vintage style (rectangular, with trimmed edges, limned in black), and the stamps and postmarks are from Egypt. The handwritten zip code doesn't appear to be vintage handwriting (and zip codes wouldn't have existed at the time this package would have been sent to Indy--1917 or so)

Henry Walton Jones, Jr. is of course Indiana Jones, and now the U of C is trying to figure out who sent the package, full of goodies like Abner Ravenwood's dusty diary with narratives like discovery of the Staff of Ra and what the Holy Grail might be made of, and photographs of Marion Ravenwood.

Here's the university's announcement of the wonderful, strange package. The school asks, "If you’re an applicant and sent this to us: Why? How? Did you make it? Why so awesome?"


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Getting down at Downton

This is a post on Downton Abbey, because I’m in love with the screenwriting…and frankly I can’t stop thinking about the show.

Last year, someone told me I would love Downton Abbey, and that she’d watched each episode of Season 1 four times. Four times! I thought that was quite a ringing endorsement, but I still dragged my feet because I don’t watch much TV.

Then another friend recommended it again this year. I was inspired one evening to look for it on Netflix, but spelling it Dounton or whatever I was doing (Dontown?) yielded no results so I gave up.

A while passed before I tried again…and honestly, I’m so happy. Being a “late adopter” meant that I could watch all of Season 1, and then dive instantly in Season 2. I’m going to start watching Season 1 again--I don’t know if I’ll manage four viewings like my friend, but most definitely I want to go back “knowing what I know” and watch how things unfold.

Julian Fellowes is an incredible storyteller. I loved Gosford Park (and was influenced by it in my current novel-in-progress), and Downton Abbey is more of the same delectable upstairs/downstairs drama. So many of the things I find fascinating about the past are included in the show: the sinking of the Titanic, the 1918 flu.

And more recently I learned that the Crawley family is in part based on the Carnarvon family. SWOON. EXCITEMENT. The very name Carnarvon elicits a Pavlovian response in me: that sense of awe as I imagine that solitary candleflame flickering for the first time in centuries on pharaonic gold.

Lord Carnarvon was financier to Howard Carter, discoverer of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. I’ve been obsessed with this discovery since I was a child. I remember on my wall I had taped up a kids funny pages article about it. My very first signed book was David Macauley’s Pyramid, and he signed it to me, “Greetings from the tomb.” I love ancient Egypt.

Howard Carter’s story is so compelling. He was told the Valley of the Kings was “exhausted,” and everyone considered him a fool for continuing to dig. He kept spending Lord Canarvon’s money, and this was to be his very last season as Carnarvon was withdrawing support. And then a staircase appeared in sand…and they dug…and they dug…and Howard Carter looked through a chink in the wall to the Treasury.

He was asked if he could see anything, and famously answered, “Yes, wonderful things.”

Ah, so pithy! How I love you, Howard Carter.

So, now knowing that Downton Abbey may show us a beautifully-filmed version of this moment…oh it’s making my heart race. There’s so much good stuff here: commoner Howard Carter’s gossiped-of romance with Carnarvon’s daughter Evelyn (a close match with the name Edith?) which had to be quashed, Carter’s illicit smuggling out of the country many antiquities, and… well, no plot spoilers but two words: mummy’s curse. I do hope we get to see this!

But even if we don’t, I know whatever Fellowes cooks up for us will be devoured with great gusto. (And don’t even get me started with the news that his next series will be about the Titanic. I was such a Titanicophile--that doesn’t look right--that watching James Cameron’s movie, I instantly noted that he had hired actors who looked like photographs of the actual crew members. The Titanic story is deep in my blood for some reason, and I was disappointed Downton Abbey only glossed over it. How extraordinary will it be when Fellowes actually focuses on it!)

I was marveling the other day that somehow with this gigantic cast of characters (looking at the most recent cast picture, I count 18, and that doesn’t include dear Bates or lost Lavinia) we understand each person’s story and care deeply about them. What a feat, to balance such a volume of stories.

My favorite character? Mrs. Patmore. Lesley Nicol is an incredible actress, with an expressive face. She so perfectly expresses the staunch demeanor of someone who knows her place, but can wiggle a little to assert herself. I will never forget her lost expression as she sat on the bed by herself, Anna having left her, to await her dreaded eye surgery.

There are a few things to quibble with. For instance, Matthew’s constant popping in from war (“The trenches? Oh, yes, I’ll go back in just a moment. But in the meantime, I’m terribly interested in my own love story, and I’ll surely avoid shellshock by holding onto this stuffed puppy”). For another, the lack of resonating emotion for very big events, like Lady Crawley’s miscarriage (of the very vaunted male heir!), or the in-house death of a diplomat. We go so quickly from thing to thing, and it’d be great to slow down just a little and digest these momentous plot twists.

But they are just quibbles. Downton Abbey is the best fun I’ve had with TV in quite a long time, and like I said at the top of this post, I’m thinking about it all the time. I can’t believe we have to wait (sob sob) until next January to see Season 3. I may just have to move to England to see it earlier.

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