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“Ramses The Great” exhibit at De Young Museum

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Visiting the Ramses‘ exhibit was a stimulating, educational, and cultural experience. Since I found out about this exhibit from my Instagram feed, I was determined to take the whole family to expose the four of us to Egyptian history and to see real artifacts, sculptures, jewelry, mummified animals, and tombs from Egypt. Learning about it through a field trip would leave an impression rather than learning about it in books. It’s on…we’re going.

Kiddos were not so enthused at the idea since mummies are freaky and they don’t like the long drive into the city, but a determined mama gets her way; I bought tickets for a timed entry on Christmas Eve.

Even with the timed tickets, the line was long. They let a number of people into the exhibit at one time, and after the initial video, you move along to the exhibit area that is organized to follow a certain path. Then, you hear the doors opening and the introduction video playing again for the next group of visitors. It was steady group of people flowing into the exhibit area, so we only got a few seconds to look at each piece. Unless you had on an audio headset to hear the history of each piece, people scooted along quickly.

My only critique of the exhibit was its limited space and tight layout. It was impossible to move around from one part of the exhibit to another without bumping into people. Once you passed by an artifact, that was it. You couldn’t go back to see it again.

If possible, we would like to see the exhibit again. It would be another opportunity to learn and to take away a more meaningful learning from it. Afterwards, Ellis regretted not being able to take notes with her notebook since it was so crowded and Elliot said he wouldn’t mind going back (I’ll take that as he enjoyed the exhibit and is fascinated with Egyptian history…I’m reaching…lol). But going there is a day trip and life gets busy. I’ll have to discuss with Chris to see if he is willing to go with us again before it ends.

Ramses The Great: Ramses was known as Ramses the Great and he is known as the most powerful pharaoh who ushered in the golden age of Egypt of the 19th Dynasty. While there, we learned he was revered as a warrior from his victory at the Battle Of Kadesh. Through the artifacts and explanation, you learn that Ramses was a devoted self-promoter and claimed ownership on buildings and statues, those that he built and did not, than any other pharaohs. He had multiple wives and had over 100 children. He was a colorful, vain, powerful, and interesting pharaoh with idiosyncrasies that drew us into his story.

Battle of Kadesh was told through this multimedia presentation. History eludes that the battle was a draw but Ramses claimed it as his victory.

Here are some pictures from the exhibit:

Picture on the wall of the front of the museum

Categories: Homeschool Adventures learning with kids Museum outing

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singlikewildflowers

Welcome to my blog! My name is Esther and I'm so happy you are here. I'm an avid nature photographer and a daydreaming thinker. My posts revolve around photos of nature's beauty, homeschooling adventures with my 2 kids, sporadic reflections on my child's heart condition, Bible reading reflections, gardening feats, and other mish mash things. Hopefully you'll leave encouraged, pensive, or smiling at the simple things of life. Thank you for stopping by and hope you'll find some interesting posts to read!

10 replies ›

    1. Egyptian history is fascinating! I think you would’ve loved it too…the multimedia portion of it was entertaining and educational. The embalmers took meticulous care to mummify the animals. It looks they were wrapped with cloths just recently; that’s how well they did.
      Maybe they may have an exhibit in Canada!

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  2. Awesome field trip opportunity! I’m feeling inspired! Our local museum did a Genghis Khan exhibit last year and it was amazing. Right now they have Toytopia. I’m thinking of taking the kids sometime soon-ish….

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  3. That looks interesting. I went to the King Tut exhibit in Toronto and thoroughly enjoyed it. This was at the Toronto Museum of Art in 1979 and got a book from the exhibit as well. In college I had a class in ancient history and the teacher was very interesting. He also taught at the University of Michigan and lived in Ann Arbor, near the campus. He had a good friend who was an archeologist and had studied dentistry. So the two of them photographed (this was in 1977 and video was not a “thing” then) the unwrapping of a mummy and examination of its teeth … he had slides of this which he showed in the class. The mummy’s name was “Poom II” which I’m spelling phonetically as I don’t recall how the name was … fascinating to see.

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    1. Archeology sounds so cool to do as a career! The joy of discovery and searching. But it seems the work would involve a lot of physical labor.
      King Tut sounds cool too. I wonder if that exhibition will come around,

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      1. I went to see the 1979 exhibition but last year they had an immersive exhibit at the same art museum. It was there for the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. I think it would be an interesting career too. I took an archeology class in college. I thought it would be interesting. The class COULD have been interesting, but the teacher himself was a relic … he used to get up to the podium with his book (which he authored by the way) and he would tell us what page to open our book to and he would stand there and read it verbatim. Yes really. Nothing else, except him reading his book. And he had a droning voice and I used to nod off within minutes of sitting down.

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      2. I couldn’t stand it when professors would read textbooks too. What’s the point of that? If they’re going to do that, might as well paraphrase it or pepper it with some interesting stories.
        Lol…funny way to say the professor was a “relic.” I’ve noticed that exhibits are geared more towards immersive experiences. There is a Michelangelo one that is in San Jose now. Gotta see when we can go to that one too.

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      3. Yes, that professor was a piece of work and I was excited to take the class. The ancient history class was interesting with that mummy and the slides though. It makes no sense why we pay tuition to see him read his own book. Do you think the immersive experience is geared more toward younger people? You liked the Van Gogh immersive experience as I recall.

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