Despite the unbelievable labor that survive into their relocation , a bit of colossal artifact have made very long trips after being buy — or , now and again , stolen . Here are a few journeying of such tremendous objects , from a whole 19th - century nosepiece to the ancient immortal of a lost city .
1. AN EGYPTIAN SPHINX
In October 1913 , a nearly 15 - ton , 3000 - twelvemonth - erstwhile sphinxarrivedwith bully fanfare in Philadelphia . From Memphis , Egypt , it had go up the Suez Canal , then board a German merchant ship , packed alongside goat skins that were destined for a local leather tannery . Once dock in the United States , a crane hoisted the scarlet granite statue onto a power train car . Finally , with the assistance of an iron - pedal motortruck , 10 horses , and 50 workers , it wasinstalledoutside the Penn Museum . It was moved inside the galleries in 1926 , and it ’s guarded the collections ever since ( although it ’s currentlyoff - viewfor conservation piece of work ) .
2. A STATUE OF JUNO
For a nearly 13 - human foot - tall , 13,000 - pound Roman goddess , Juno has acquire around . With a caput sculpture in the first or 2nd hundred CE and a body made a century or two after , the statue ’s first recorded whereabouts are in thegardensof Rome ’s Villa Ludovisi . She was deal to Americans Charles and Mary Sprague in 1897 , then transported in 1904 to their plate in Brookline , Massachusetts . There the marble fair sex , decked out in feed gown and with a crown on her giant head , presided over the driveway of their Brandegee Estate . It reportedly took 12 ox to drag her into position .
After a C in the open zephyr , Juno was get by the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston , in 2011 . Getting the statue inside the museum require filch it by crane and lowering it80 feetthrough a skylight . Unfortunately , all those years of exposure in the outdoors had deteriorated her poriferous marble , with cracks and vandalism further mar the stone , so blanket conservation was carried out correctly in the gallery ( including anose and lipreplacement ) . Now she ’s resist proudly on a brand - reinforced footstall asthe largestclassical marble statue in an American museum .
3. LONDON BRIDGE
Block by block , this nineteenth - century bridge deck was relocated to a brand novel 20th - century American development . Industrialist Robert P. McCulloch bought the 1830s London Bridge from the Corporation of London onApril 18 , 1968for tight to $ 2.5 million . The impish bridgework — a project of Scottish civil applied scientist John Renniecompletedby his sons , John Rennie the Younger and George — had span the River Thames , but was ineffectual to support New dealings and needed to be replace . McCulloch had its cautiously numbered granite blocks reconstructed over a reinforcedconcrete structureinLake Havasu City , a planned community he established in the Arizona desert . ( He think the historic structure would push back tourism and encourage home vendee to vest . ) It opened in 1971 , connect a Colorado River island with Lake Havasu City . His program seems to have worked : Today the town is flourish , and the bridge still draws plenty of tourist .
4. AN IMPERIAL COFFIN
In 2010 , an purple coffin date to the Tang Dynastywas repatriatedto China from the United States . It had gone missingin 2006 , stolen the right way from the grave of empress Wu Huifei — a staggering feat , since it weigh 27 oodles and stretches 13 feet long by 6.5 foot high . After two years of investigations , the local police discovered that the tomb — carved with animals , prime , and human figures — had been sold to a man of affairs for $ 1 million and had jaunt all the way to the United States . Once face by police via intercessor , the man of affairs agreed to return the item , which then went on video display at theShaanxi History Museumin Xi’an . The incident is a monitor of the on-going looting of Chinese antiquities from archaeological sites , which experts say is growing progressively bold .
5. GOD OF A LOST CITY
For 1000 years , Hapy , the god of fertility , was inundate off the Egyptian seacoast . Then , in theearly 2000s , a team of divers discovered afragmentof the stupendous fourth - one C BCE red granite statue . Weighing 6 tons and standing over 17 feet tall , Hapy is now one of more than 200 objects touring in " Sunken Cities : Egypt ’s Lost Worlds . " From belittled coins and lamp to an over-12,000 - Egyptian pound sculpture of a baron , each is a relic of the drowned city of Thonis - Heracleion . The major Egyptian larboard was founded around the7th century BCE , and in all probability abandoned due torisingsea levels and earthquake . Hapy is among the most massive of the exhibition ’s artifacts , which have tour London , Paris , Zurich , and Saint Louis — with a visitto Minneapolison the apparent horizon this descent .
6. PIECES OF THE BERLIN WALL
After the tumble of the Berlin Wall on November 9 , 1989 , remnants of the monumental roadblock scattered throughout the world . Concrete pieces of the anatomical structure outdoor stage at almost100 land site , ranging from amen ’s bathroomin a Las Vegas cassino tothe Vatican Gardensin Vatican City . A 12 - foot - tall section , giftedto Olympian Usain Bolt , is at Up - Park Camp in Kingston , Jamaica , while a dentist in Sosnovka , Poland , grow 40segments and dress them as an art installation . However , the foresighted stretch is still in Berlin — the East Side Gallery — beautify with nearly a mil of street prowess , a phantom of the rampart ’s former 96 - international mile path .
7. IRAQ TRAUMA BAY FLOOR
A3000 - pound , 7 - by-7 - groundwork surgical incision of concrete floor is considered the internet site where the most American liveswere bothlost and saved during Operation Iraqi Freedom . In 2008 , the floor of Trauma Bay II was delicately relocate from Balad Air Base in Iraq to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Springs , Maryland . The scuffed level , stained with antiseptics , was salvaged when the irregular aesculapian adeptness were torn down . Now part of an exhibition on aesculapian staff office in Iraq , the concrete slab recalls the trauma care for the many injure who were handle on it between 2003 and 2007 .
8. CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLES
Theoldesthuman - made outdoor target in New York City was cut up when Manhattan was still wilderness . The 69 - foot , 220 - ton dagger , dub Cleopatra ’s Needle ( though it has no connection to Cleopatra ) , is located in Central Park just behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Its familiar dagger is by theRiver Thamesin London ; both werecommissionedaround 1450 BCE by Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III for the Heliopolis sun synagogue . In 12 BCE , they were moved over 100 mile to Alexandria by parliamentary procedure of Augustus Caesar , and erected at the Caesareum .
