This was legendary film composer Elmer Bernstein's first major project. Bernstein had just had some success with his jazz score for The Man with the Golden Arm. However, he was not Cecil B. DeMille's first choice to score the film. DeMille had a long relationship with Paramount contract composer Victor Young, who had been working with DeMille since North West Mounted Police. Unfortunately, Young had become very ill and could not accept the assignment.
To create the effect of the sandstorms, in the narrated desert sequence, as Moses left Egypt and headed to Midian, (unknown, to him), Cecil B. DeMille used the engine blast from tied-down Egyptian air force planes.
Up until the release of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, The Ten Commandments was the highest grossing religious epic in history, earning over $65.5 million in 1956. (This translates into $446 million $446,000,000 numerically, in current figures and inflation, throughout the years.)
Urban legend has it that Anne Baxter's character's name was changed from Nefertiti to Nefertiri because Cecil B. DeMille was afraid people would make "boob" jokes. In reality, DeMille was sticking to history: Rameses II's queen was called Nefretiri. Nefertiti lived about 60 years earlier than Rameses and Nefertiti. Both names mean "Beautiful".
When Yul Brynner was told he would be playing Pharaoh Rameses II, opposite of Charlton Heston's Moses and that he would be shirtless for a majority of the film, he began a rigorous weight lifting program because he did not want to be physically overshadowed by Charlton Heston (which explains his buffer than normal physique during The King and I, his other film he was acted and on, approximately a month apart, at the time of the two films, as they were started and completed.
When Woody Strode reported to work, he presented Cecil B. DeMille with an antique Bible, that Woody Strode's wife had found. DeMille was so impressed with the gift he not only put Strode in two parts in the film but told Strode that if he ever wanted a part in a future DeMille film, all he had to do was ask. Unfortunately, this project was DeMille's final film, due to declining health.
When asking the Egyptian authorities for permission to film there, Cecil B. DeMille was pleasantly surprised to find out they were fans of his film The Crusades. "You treated us Arabs in the film so well, you may do anything here you want," they told him.