Harvard Egyptologist leads discussion on search for California sphinx
At what other event would you hear, “This time there would be no Jell-O?” mused Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian last Wednesday at the Harvard Art Museums. It sounded like a line straight from the wildly popular Science and Cooking Pubic Lecture Series, but the actual setting was a discussion and screening of a motion picture classic. Jell-O, it turns out, played the role of the famously parted Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent “The Ten Commandments.” (It made no repeat appearance in DeMille’s 1956 remake.) Lacking high-tech effects in 1923, DeMille and his production team opted for a 5-foot tub filled with the gelatin dessert, along with a few camera tricks, to work their miracle. But there would be no tricks when it came to creating the set for the film in the dunes of Guadalupe, Calif., a stand-in for Egypt. For months, an army of workers toiled on the...