10 Movies That Left Behind Crazy Things On Film Sets
4. A 15-Foot Sphinx Prop Was Buried In Californian Sand Dunes For 90 YEARS - The Ten Commandments
Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 religious epic The Ten Commandments was one of the most ambitious films of its era, making plentiful use of California's vast Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes to double as the Egyptian desert.
1600 tradesfolk helped construct elaborate sets on the dunes, which included four 35-foot Pharaoh statues, 21 sphinxes, and 110-foot tall gates, all of which was rumoured to have been blown up and buried in the sand after production was wrapped.
However in 2012, archaeologists working in the area discovered one of the sphinx heads, and in the years that followed attempts were made to excavate the surrounding area in the hope of discovering the entire buried set.
A documentary, The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille, was even made about the find, and in 2017 a second sphinx head was discovered.
This seems to confirm that the set wasn't destroyed by a demolition job, but more likely broken and buried by weather conditions and the natural shifting of the dunes.
As for why DeMille never transported the props away from the dunes? It's been theorised that it may have been too expensive to move and store them elsewhere.