The Ten Commandments

The enormous sets of ancient Egypt have become a Hollywood legend in themselves. The "City of the Pharaohs" was constructed of wood and plaster in the Guadalupe Dunes, an 18-mile stretch of coastal sand 170 miles north of L.A. The sets featured four 35-foot-tall statues of the Pharaoh Ramses, 21 five-ton sphinxes, and city walls over 120 feet high. An army of 2,500 actors, extras, carpenters, plasterers, painters, cooks, staff, and film crew members inhabited the set for three months, housed in a virtual army camp that featured nearly 1,000 tents. (3,500 animals, used in recreating the scenes of ancient Egypt, were housed in a huge corral downwind of the camp.) When shooting wrapped, Cecil B. DeMille simply had the massive Egyptian city sets bulldozed, and buried in a huge pit beneath the sand, where they remain to this day. For years, the legendary "Lost City of DeMille" was spoken of by locals in Guadalupe who had worked on the film set. Artifacts from the Egyptian sets were found in the dunes, and can sometimes be found in local houses in the area. (DeMille even said in his autobiography, "If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope that they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization extended all the way to the Pacific Coast of North America.") In 1983, documentary filmmaker Peter Brosnan located the remains of the DeMille sets, still buried beneath the dunes. The site is now recognized as an official archaeological site by the state of California, and it is against the law to remove artifacts from the site. Brosnan has been trying for many years to raise money from the Hollywood studios to excavate the site, but so far has been unable to do so.

Midway through production the film ran out of money and Cecil B. DeMille's original backers pulled out. The production was saved when DeMille called in a personal favor from his friend Amadeo Giannini, one of the founders of Bank of America. Giannini's $500,000 investment allowed the production to continue without stopping.

Most of the chariot crashes in the prologue were real and unplanned.

In 2014, archaeologists discovered one of the film's prop sphinx statues beneath the desert dunes of Guadalupe, California. Although found in a fragmentary state, it has been slated for restoration with hopes of an exhibit by late 2015.

During one day of the filming of the Exodus scenes, about 60 bit players were injured in chariot crashes. Most went right back to work after getting bandaged up.