This is a moai from Easter Island — one of the remotest inhabited places on Earth.
It stands 2.4 metres tall and weighs four tonnes.
Its name in the Rapa Nui language means something close to 'stolen friend.'
Look at the back.
After this moai was made, the Rapa Nui people carved elaborate petroglyphs into the basalt: birdman figures, a dance paddle, symbols of a new religion replacing the old one.
This is two monuments in one — ancestor worship and the cult that replaced it, layered onto the same stone.
It was taken by the crew of HMS Topaze in 1868 and given to Queen Victoria, who gave it to the museum.
The Rapa Nui people have formally asked for its return.
In 2022, British Museum trustees met a Rapa Nui delegation and agreed to explore further conversations.
It remains in Room 24.
Fun fact: Easter Island is 3,500 kilometres from the nearest inhabited land.
The Rapa Nui people navigated to it in canoes.
They built nearly 1,000 moai.
Then, for reasons still debated, they stopped.
