Sphinx from 90-year-old movie set unearthed in California

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Archaeologists working in sand dunes on the central California coast have dug up an intact plaster sphinx that was part of an Egyptian movie set built more than 90 years ago for Cecil B. DeMille's silent religious, epic film "The Ten Commandments."

The 1923 movie scenes were filmed at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. This location was originally chosen because its immense sand dunes provided a superficial resemblance to the Egyptian desert, and DeMille built an epic Egyptian dreamscape there for the film.

An excavation crew uses surfboards fastened to plywood as a sled to remove a plaster sphinx head from the dunes in Guadalupe, California, November 2, 2017. /Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center via AP

The massive prop sets included four 11-meter-tall Pharaoch statues, 21 giant sphinxes, and gates reaching a height of 33.5 meters. Crew members built the sphinxes in Los Angeles and transported them piece by piece to Guadalupe, where they were assembled on set.

After the filming was completed, DeMille had the sets pushed into a trench and buried, since they were too expensive to move and too valuable to leave for rival filmmakers to poach. For nine decades, fragile plaster pieces lay in graves of sand in the dunes some 282 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles.

The 300-pound (136-kilogram) sphinx unearthed this time is the second recovered from the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes.

The front of an uncovered sphinx featuring ornate detail, including a detailed necklace in Guadalupe, California /Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center via AP

In 2012, the head of a sphinx was partially exhumed, and then reassembled and put on display at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center. Archaeologists had spent time and money trying to find the rest of the body and recover it. A 2014 recovery effort showed the body was in poor shape and failed eventually, but a second better-preserved sphinx was discovered, which was proved could be reconstructed.

Sphinxes lay undisturbed before recovery efforts began. Dunes Center Executive Director Doug Jenzen tells Santa Barbara news station KEYT-TV that the newly recovered one is unlike other items found on previous digs because most of it is preserved with the original paint intact. It is expected to go on display at the dunes museum next summer.

Source(s): AP