This is a fragment — the upper half of a colossal statue that once stood in the Ramesseum, Ramesses II's mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile.
It weighs seven and a half tonnes, and when it arrived in London in 1821 it was the largest Egyptian object ever brought to Europe.
The museum calls it the Younger Memnon, a name given by ancient Greek travellers who mistakenly identified the statue and called the site the Memnonium for centuries before anyone could read hieroglyphics.
It was moved by Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a former circus strongman turned self-taught archaeologist.
He drilled the hole you can see in the right shoulder to attach the ropes and rollers used to drag it to the river.
The journey from Luxor to London took two years.
It is sometimes said to have inspired Shelley's poem Ozymandias — 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.'
Scholars debate whether Shelley actually saw it.
What is not debated is the expression on the face: absolute, tranquil certainty.
Three thousand years of erosion, and it still has that.
