Off-Beat-News
Archaeologists find sphinx in California─── 07:44 Sat, 02 Dec 2017
Archaeologists digging amidst the dunes of California’s Santa Barbara County have unearthed a miraculous find: an intact, 130kg sphinx head.
Live Science reports the relic hails not from the deserts of ancient Egypt, but from the set of The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. DeMille’s pioneering 1923 Hollywood blockbuster.
Part of the silent, black-and-white film was shot in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, in an attempt to mimic Egypt’s sandy landscape.
But after filming wrapped, DeMille ordered his creation to be buried within the dunes, for reasons that are not entirely clear.
Filmmaker Peter Brosnan set out the find the buried site in the 1980's but it took decades of wrangling to get approval as the dunes are a protected site.
In 2012 his team unearthed part of a sphinx but it crumbled.
They, however, returned to the site last month and extracted the sphinx using a foam spray that strengthened the interior of the object.
Smithsonian
