Egyptian Adventure Ideas

Planning an Egyptian themed adventure or treasure hunt and need some ideas? Here ya go...

Decoding is a simple device used in treasure hunts. Why not take it a step further and have them decipher some Egyptian hieroglyphs? Now, don't be concerned if you can't read or write a word of it yourself. There are several free Egyptian hieroglyph translators online. Just make sure that you provide a key for your adventurers. If you are using direct word translations, make sure they can translate enough of the words to understand the meaning of the message. Provide MORE words than they'll need on their translation sheets lest they'll be able to figure out what the message might be based on the words provided. For extra problem solving fun, don't provide a translation for EVERY word in the message!

Treasure hunt adventures are made up of a series of stops. Make each stop a part of the story. Perhaps at their first stop they find a desk or table with a bunch of research on it (i.e. books, notes and folders, pens and paper, artifacts, etc.) The adventurers must gather the pieces of information that they'll need from the desk before moving on (without taking too much lest the owner of the research desk realizes that someone was snooping around their desk.)

Reward them along the way with different objects that they collect, trying to keep them consistent with your story. For example, perhaps the Egyptian research that they need isn't all in one place. Perhaps they'll need to visit three different locations to collect the three pieces of the research. This creates three natural locations for your hunt, rewarding the adventurers along the way items that they need and they can carry away. This also works for collecting items just as gems or other treasure - perhaps to bribe a character/volunteer you have situated at the very end of your adventure.

Try to make the final stop, location or activity the most exciting. There are a variety of ways of making this happen including:

o Having them try to sneak past someone who could serious penalize their efforts in some way (delay them, put them in 'jail' etc.)

o Create a small Egyptian temple in the same way that you might make a garage haunted house (see HERE for more ideas on this). Fill it with spider webs and darkness. A fog machine inside would be great as well. It doesn't need to be large to be effective. A small hole that they must crawl through would also be very effective. This would be the perfect place to hide their final treasure - truly all in the Indiana Jones style!

o Have a time sensitive activity. Perhaps a bomb will go off in ten minutes unless they can successfully accomplish a certain task. Perhaps an 'enemy' in your story will be arriving and the adventurers must get what they need and leave before they arrive.

o Have a volunteer play a character that they must get past. Perhaps it's a customs officer and they are trying to smuggle the treasure out of the country? Perhaps they are passing themselves off as someone else and your volunteer will make them sweat a little, trying to act the part before they successfully escape.

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The following are some collected ideas from our Ultimate Ancient Egypt Themed Event - a huge collection of Ancient Egypt theme party ideas. To see more about the Ultimate Ancient Egypt Themed Event, click HERE.

For simple, stone temple walls, cut 'bricks' from cardboard boxes. A perfect cube has six sides, but a box with flaps on top and bottom has 14! Cut each piece out individually and attack to a wall with the plain side outward. Images can now be drawn for the final touch. This is great for covering a large area with minimal materials.

Gold coffin (or gold walls, if needed.) Spray paint the box structure with a standard HIGH GLOSS finish gold spray paint (not matte finish.) Using some art history books as guides, draw
cartouche images on the sides using a fine tipped, black permanent marker. Now, the marker will not be dark enough atop the gold spray paint…you'll need to go back over it with some black acrylic paint. Some color was used by the Egyptians, notably white, turquoise and an earthy brick red. Reflect these colors in touch up details on the sides of the coffins.

For simple temple walls, try using standard cardboard voting booths. For a local supplier, check you nearest elementary school so see where they get theirs. These walls can be covered quickly and easily with butcher paper and positioned in any way to suit your needs and location.
If you want to paint with a faux rock/stone finish (without spending an arm and a leg on those craft store kits) buy a few cans of spray paint instead. Gray, black and white should do the trick
(unless you'd like to substitute and black gray with tan and brown - for caves.) With a hobby razor blade, lightly score the nozzle hole of the spray can. This will cause the paint to sputter rather than spray. Make sure the surface is covered first in the gray (or brown), then add some sputtering of the white and black.

If you've used cardboard in any way to build temple walls et. al., make sure to have a few 'loose stones' (individual empty boxes) laying about the foot of the temple walls to simulate the walls
coming apart.

Spider webbing is a must. It's cheap and a little goes a long way. For best results, apply sparingly and thinly. Webbing is great for placing in front of areas that you do not want others to have access to. I can't think of any place at your event where a little spider webbing wouldn't be appropriate - as long as it is thinly applied. Once again, check your local Halloween stores (online as well) for the best deals.

For great temple columns, call around to a couple local construction companies and ask where they purchase sono tubes. These can be bought in a variety of widths and sizes and are very sturdy.

For VERY inexpensive brick walls, use brown postal wrapping paper and a new rectangle sponge. With any water based paint (try not to dilute it too much) use the sponge as a stamp to imprint bricks onto the paper. Although not very realistic, it 'works' for areas that are not meant for high profile places. A great way to blanket an area.

Get the story going before the party even starts. A few days before the party/event, email each guest a piece of information from a 'character' in your treasure hunt. You can obtain a free email account from Hotmail.com - you can sign up under any name you want and it's simple - you can set it up in minutes!

Have the participants sneak up on a sleeping mummy to steal a clue or artifact from him - without waking him.

In the invitations, give the guests instructions to do a little 'research' before the day of the event/party. Use this information as answers to your puzzles or clues to solve during the adventure. It's a great way to get your participants into the story before they even arrive. They will be eager to know why they were asked to look up certain facts and information.

Start your participants out with some gold coins or jewels. Throughout their adventure, they'll have to spend them wisely. Perhaps they'll meet a mapmaker who will sell them a map for a couple coins. Later on, they might need to buy a clue or artifact from an art dealer. Perhaps even further they'll need to bribe a government official…When you use this component, you might want to consider inserting ways for teams to earn coins along the way as well.

Mail a letter to the guests a few days after the event from one of the characters they met at the party. For example, if they recovered a lost idol during an activity, the might receive a letter from the Director of Antiquities of the local natural history museum thanking them for their donation to the museum. It's a great way to punctuate the party and remind your guests of the great time they had.

A great way to make mummy wrapping is to use tea stained cheesecloth (what cooks use - especially on turkeys and other large foul.) Have fun playing with it…it won't take you long how to figure out how to wrap it. (A note about wrapping, make sure that the strips are NOT all in uniform length or width… remember, these mummies have been around for centuries and the wrappings have all been nearly disintegrated!)

Click HERE for more Ancient Egypt themed ideas.