Site of the 1923 Filming of the Ten Commandments
About 60 years after the movie
was made, Emmy award winning filmmaker Peter Brosnan was intrigued by an entry
in DeMille's autobiography. DeMille talks about buried sphinx's in the Guadalupe
Dunes. Brosnan decides to investigate and (in 1983) manages to discover the
buried movie set. With its discovery, Brosnan realized that there was a chance
to record this lost piece of Hollywood film history as well as bring its story
to the public.
Brosnan contacted archaeologist
Dr. John Parker to talk about the feasibility of recording and recovering
portions of the set. In 1990, with the help of a grant from the Bank of America,
Parker and Brosnan set out for the dunes and two weeks of archaeological mapping
and video taping. This work was aided by Geophysics specialist Dr. Lambert
Dolphin and ground penetrating radar from the Stanford Research Institute.
This initial work confirmed that
2/3 of the set material was still buried in the dune. Parker recorded the
location with the State of California as archaeological site CA-SBA-2392H. The
Ten Commandments site covers the area of 2 football fields and contains historic
cultural material to a depth of 6 feet.
Since that initial mapping
program in 1990, additional field seasons have completed a detailed surface
mapping of the site. With filming along the way, Brosnan has made great strides
in his efforts to produce a documentary about this period of Hollywood history.
In addition, the necessary
permits and permissions have been secured for the final work.
Today, Parker and Brosnan are
waiting for the required funding to be able to proceed with the archaeological
excavation of a portion of the site.
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