In early May 2008, archaeologists working in Egypt uncovered a “lost pyramid.” One might legitimately ask: how can such a mammoth structure become lost? The answer lies in the great sand sea of the Sahara Desert, a shifting geographical feature that can destroy, obscure or conceal the artifacts of humankind just as quickly and efficiently as the world’s oceans. The pyramid, thought to be part of the sprawling burial complex of King Menkauhor, was in fact lost twice to the sands. The structure was originally unearthed in the mid-19th century by a German scientist named Karl Richard Lepsius, a pioneer in Egyptology who is credited for uncovering nearly seventy pyramids and one hundred and thirty ancient tombs. In his massive tome on Egyptian ruins entitled Denkmaier aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia), Lepsius referred to the building as a “headless pyramid” due to its missing top, the stones of which were probably scavenged by locals to create nearby villages. In the intervening century-and-a-half, however, the desert reclaimed the pyramid and scientist have struggled for generations to use Lepsius’s notes to determine its exact location. When it was finally found, it lay beneath twenty-five feet of desert sand!

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Pyramids aside, the hot, arid temperatures and swirling sands of the earth’s deserts can trap and preserve a variety of relics. In 1959, a British team searching for oil deposits in the Libyan desert came upon an unearthly site... the nearly intact remains of a World War II era American B-24 bomber. Identified as the “Lady Be Good,” the plane was reported missing in April 1943 after it failed to return from a bombing raid over Naples, Italy. At the time, American forces launched an extensive search but concentrated most of their efforts on the Mediterranean, the assumption being that the plane ditched in the ocean after sustaining damage over Italy. It appeSars, however, that due to poor visibility and navigational error the “Lady Be Good” actually overshot its landing strip on the Libyan coast and flew over four-hundred miles inland. The crew bailed out and the plane crashed, although amazingly it remained mostly intact. The men aboard all eventually perished, some during a futile attempt to walk out of the sea of sand. All but one body was recovered in 1960 and returned to the United States. The plane was remarkably preserved by the environment, although the blowing sands had nearly stripped it of its original paint job. In fact, some of the men who discovered her stated that her machine guns still worked, despite sitting unused for sixteen years. By the 1970s, the wreckage had been nearly looted to its frame by souvenir hunters. What remained was eventually hauled away by the Libyan military for “safekeeping” and is now housed in Tobruk.

In the 1990s, sets and props used in the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV, A New Hope) were rediscovered on a lark by archaeologists working in Tunisia. The Tunisian desert had been the backdrop to many of the early movie scenes depicting the desert world of Tatooine, the homeland of Luke Skywalker. When production concluded, George Lucas and his team of filmmakers abandoned the sets intact. Over the quarter century that has elapsed, native tribesmen have lived in the sets or salvaged them as curiosities. In wasn’t until the last ten years, however, that visiting the Tunisian Star Wars sets has become its own cottage industry. Additional Star Wars sets and locations in Norway and Death Valley, California, are frequented by tourists, but to a lesser extent.

Finally, and closer to the Outcast Earth team’s current location, an entire Egyptian city is slowly being unearthed from beneath the Nipomo Sand Dunes outside of Santa Barbara, California. As with the Star Wars sets, this city is part of a famous Hollywood production from the silent era – the 1923 Cecil B. DeMille classic The Ten Commandments. DeMille, perhaps the industry’s most famous megalomaniac, ordered the construction of the city complete with mummy-filled crypts, giant statuary, massive walls, temples and palaces. The breadth of the city was staggering to imagine – over seven hundred feet across at its widest point and one hundred and twenty feet at its tallest. It took 1,500 workers to build the city and once completed it was occupied by 5,000 animals and 2,500 film extras in full costume and makeup.

DeMille leased the land for the set from the Union Sugar company, with the understanding that the entire complex would be dismantled and removed once filming was completed. But with production costs soaring to over $40,000 per day, DeMille ordered his staff to simply dig a large hole in the dunes, blow up the city with dynamite, bulldoze the pieces into the pit and then cover it over with sand. The era of silent films ended soon after and three decades later DeMille would recreate The Ten Commandments in a more popular form with Charleton Heston in the role of Moses. No one gave any further thought to DeMille’s “City of the Pharaohs” until the great director’s autobiography was posthumously published three years after the second Commandments hit the movie theaters.

In the book, DeMille left a tantalizing clue about what had actually happened to the 1923 set when he wrote: ““If a thousand years from now, archeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope they won’t rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization ... extended all the way to the Pacific Coast.”

This single sentence was enough to intrigue archaeologist John Parker, who began a quest to unearth and preserve the lost city in 1983. By this time, the Nipomo Sand Dunes belonged to the Nature Conservancy, an agency that was eager to help in the recovery effort. In a sadly ironic twist, however, none of the major Hollywood movie studios seemed even vaguely interested in the project.

In 1998, a foundation called “Friends of the Lost City” was established to help fund the excavation of the site. Using ground penetrating radar and modern archaeological techniques, the foundation has been able to recover a variety of relics and believes that even more are still hidden intact below the sands. The foundation is currently seeking more funding to complete their work and a documentary film on their efforts. Additional information can be found on the foundation’s website at www.lostcitydemille.com.