De Big Dig Find

Archaeologists dig in the strangest places and they seek things we might not consider to be antique or ancient history .....

Sphinx Head .... Found In The Sands.

But of course if the Victorian era is now worthy of archaeological digs - particularly industrial sites as the birth of the industrial revolution becomes something to uncover - then more recent eras are as well.

So perhaps it should be no surprise that archaeologists have been digging the sites from the 1920's, a time that was only 30 odd years before my birth (god how that makes me feel old!). And before you younger dudes get smug, consider this, they now do digs on military sites from the 1940's, which means that anyone born in the late 1970's, early 1980's, is now about the same distance away from sites deemed old enough for archaeological digs, as I was to the 1920's.

Interestingly, the site from the 1920's that has prompted a lot of interest is the sand dunes of California .... the reason? Well in 1923 Cecil B. DeMille made "The Ten Commandments," a silent version of the story of the Hebrews exodus from Egypt. This movie could not use special effects (as his 1956 remake did) or CGI, so DeMille was going to recreate ancient Egypt on the same scale as ancient Egypt was built. So the film required thousands of actors, crew, and animals and an immense construction project.

Twenty One Sphinxes Were Created - Set Up - Then Lost To The Sands.

Paul Iribe (aka the father of art deco), built a lavish set 12 stories high and 800 feet wide made from plaster of paris, in the Guadalupe-Nipomo sand dunes on the California coast. Although the 1923 film was in black and white, the set, was nonetheless painted in vibrant colour, and it was big .... really big. There were four 35-foot-tall statues of Ramses II which guarded a 110-foot gate, while 21 sphinxes, each weighing five tons, lined the avenue leading up to the entrance.

When filming was completed, DeMille was left with a dilemma as the set was too expensive to move, and far too valuable to leave for a rival film-maker to use. If he had thought outside the box, he could have created the first theme park .... but he didn't, so DeMille ordered it be buried. However he did say in "The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille," which was written in 1959 that -

"If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization, far from being confined to the valley of the Nile, extended all the way to the Pacific coast of North America."

The 1923 (L) and 1956 (R) Sets Were Very Similar. But The Latter Was Created With Special Effects ....

Now, in late 2017 a team of archaeologists started digging the site and have uncovered parts of the set, preserved in the dry sands (much like the original Egyptians remains), including a number of sphinx heads. This wasn't the first visit to the site, an earlier an excavation of the movie site took place in the 1990's. Archaeologists also found the head of a sphinx buried in the dunes during another dig in 2012. There were 21 sphinx heads that were built for the original set.

So far the the latest dig season found only prohibition liquor bottles, actors make-up, and tobacco tins, among the other items dug up, and these, along with a number of the sphinx heads are expected to be on display at the Dunes Centre Museum in 2018.