CECIL B. De MILLE'S LOST DESERT CITY

Watching Tom Cruise's reboot of the Mummy last night - basically Mummy Impossible! -  I was reminded of something I'd read years ago about another American desert movie, if not the very first, made over a century ago in 1923:

Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.

It was a silent, enormous and expensive undertaking in the unforgiving sands of California.

Paramount artisans crafted the Sphinx like masons three thousand years ago!

Paramount Studio

I recall reading that Cecil's entire Pharaoh set was so massively huge that he could not afford to take it out of the Guadalupe desert where they were filming, so the whole things was buried in the vastness of the dunes!

Paramount Studio

It's still out there brooding under the shifting barchans, occasionally revealing a scree of perished plaster.

Archaeologists are involved, as they would be on an ancient dig! 

Watch this fascinating short clip about their attempts to recover De Mille's Lost City.

Have you ever been there readers?

The Garden of the Terracotta Roof Tiles

 Currently plagued by a trapped sciatic nerve I'm basically seat-bound assisting Junior in his garden pursuits as a budding Indiana Jones.

The dig site garnered a whole tray of finds, mostly terracotta, some fossils (he smelt a rat there!) and a 1936 George V One Penny ( he should have smelt a rat there!).

Junior was most excited about four big pieces of old roof tile he dug up. They were really in situ.

With some help from the Seated One he glued them back together. It says Rowley on it quite clearly.

Using a mix of brick dust and PVA Junior filled in the biggest cracks and set it to dry.

No longer a good roof tile, it'll make a fine display item for Junior somewhere out of the rain in the garden. 

Have you ever dug up anything?

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

JUNIOR'S DIG

 Moonbase Junior's here for a week of his summer holidays. Remember them! Six weeks off!

To keep him entertained - for a while - I set up0 an archaeology dig station in the garden. Junior loves fossils and pottery bits.

The work station has trowels, brushes, a small electric file and all manner of other bits.

oh, and a dig trench, where I've hidden various fossils and metal oddments like a 1935 penny.

Were you a budding archaeologist or paleontologist when you were a kid readers?

A LOAD OF OLD POLLOCKS

Woodsy

Here's a photo of the few clays I mounted for display once setting up my basement. 

The pipe center top, is of the comic character Ally Sloper from the 19 century though it and most of the pipes shown were made from old moulds by a firm known as 'Pollocks of Manchester' who made them through the 1960's.

Terranova47

NY