"The Egyptians didn't care about the brain," the docent told the school kids seated on the floor Friday morning around a rag doll version of an ancient Egyptian boy. "They believed it was the heart that mattered."
The students then saw and heard him describe how, when preparing a body for mummification, holy men would use instruments to reach through the dead person's nose and extract brain matter.
Just another day at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, where oldsters and youngsters have viewed the mummy exhibit the last three years.
Just another day, that is, but for the federal raid on the place 24 hours earlier. Most likely, the kids hadn't read the papers Friday morning and didn't know that the docents -- part of the "good guy" segment of society -- were soldiering on while waiting to see what the fallout would be from the raid.
Raid?
The feds raid sweatshops where vulnerable immigrants are worked to the bone.
Or nondescript storefronts that hide illegal bookmaking operations.
Or the house in the hills that doubles as a meth lab.
They don't raid museums.
Museums are where we escape to, not from.
Where we go to forget about the world's craziness, not run into it.
Where we go to satisfy our aesthetic needs, connect with our ancestral roots and, while we're there, buy an overpriced lunch.
At least, those are the expectations.
But just like a tour group on a planned visit, federal agents converged on the Bowers and three other Southern California museums early Thursday morning in search of proof that the museum knowingly accepted looted antiquities.
The search warrant that led to the raid contends that Bowers accepted smuggled items from Thailand and Native American sites in the United States.
If anything contributed to a sense of normality at this potentially damaging moment in the museum's history, it was the docents, mostly retired teachers who give of their time and knowledge.
In one wing, a docent explained the importance of the crook and flail in ancient Egypt, and how it symbolized power for Egyptian gods like Osiris.
In another wing, a docent was introducing students to "TJ," a nickname for Tjayasetimu, a mummified 12-year-old girl who predates the students by about 3,000 years.
The docent wasn't sure how she died, but told the students that modern-day technology had allowed researchers to "see" an abdominal incision used to remove her organs before mummification.
