Archaeologists Unearth Giant Sphinx—in California
Last week, archaeologists excavated an enormous sphinx buried underneath a windswept California sand dune. If it sounds like a story straight out of Hollywood, it actually is.
History Channel News - In 1923 a great Egyptian civilization arose like a mirage from a sandy stretch of the central California coastline. On the windswept dunes near the small farming village of Guadalupe a double line of 21 sphinxes flanked a grand boulevard that led to an imposing entrance gate, 109 feet tall and 750 feet wide, emblazoned with bas reliefs of horse-drawn chariots and guarded by four enormous statues of Ramses II.
The massive “City of the Pharaoh” was in reality the largest set in movie history at the time, big enough to dwarf the 2,500 actors and more than 3,000 animals cast to appear in legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille’s silent movie “The Ten Commandments.” Capitalizing on the interest in all things Egyptian following archaeologist Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb the previous year, DeMille’s crew re-created ancient Egypt on the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes 160 miles northwest of Hollywood. The film crew built the entrance gate on a towering scaffold and constructed the enormous plaster sphinxes back in Los Angeles and transported them by open truck in two parts, allowing them to fit under roadway bridges, to the coastal dunes where they were reassembled.
