PHILADELPHIA — How do you move a priceless, 25,000-pound sphinx? Very carefully.
The largest sphinx in the Western Hemisphere is on the move for the first time in nearly 100 years.
The Penn Museum in Philadelphia is relocating its 3,000-year-old sphinx of Pharaoh Ramses II from the Egypt Gallery where it's resided since 1926. The sphinx's slow, painstaking journey began Wednesday morning. It's moving about 250 feet to a featured location in the museum's new entrance hall.
Museum officials are using air dollies to move the statue through a series of doorways, windows, hairpin turns and tight squeezes.
Museum director Julian 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."