3,000-Year-Old Huge Sphinx Moves To New Spot Inside Penn Museum
PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) - The largest sphinx statue in the western hemisphere has a new home inside the Penn Museum. The 25,000-pound sculpture was carefully relocated to the museum's main entrance lobby on Wednesday morning.
The 3,000-year-old sphinx of famed Pharaoh Ramses II has resided in the museum's Egypt Gallery since 1926.
The statue arrived in Philadelphia in 1913 on a boat from Germany. It was docked in Port Richmond and carried through the city on a horse-drawn cart.
On Tuesday, the museum prepared for the move by moving the Sphinx about 250 feet before its move to its current place outdoors.
Workers at Penn Museum are in the process of moving this 25-thousand pound, 3,000 year old Sphinx to its new place in the museum. pic.twitter.com/m2UscibLbq
— Dan Koob (@SporttradeKoob) June 12, 2019
Museum officials used air dollies to move the statue through a series of doorways, windows, hairpin turns and tight squeezes.
"The sphinx weighs about 25,000 pounds. So what's the equivalent of that? Well, that's about 12 Liberty Bells, 87 Philadelphia Phanatics and 64,000 cheesesteaks," museum director Julian Siggers said.
Siggers says the sphinx has been the museum's unofficial mascot for a long time, and its new location will put it "front and center."
CBS3 Reporter Dan Koob contributed to this report.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)