It depicts the Nineteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II wearing the Nemes head-dress with a cobra diadem on top.

Napoleon's men tried but failed to dig and remove it to France during his 1798 expedition there, during which he did acquire but then lost the Rosetta Stone.

Following an idea mentioned to him by his friend Johann Ludwig Burckhardt of digging the statue and bringing it to Britain, the British Consul General Henry Salt hired the adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in Cairo in 1815 for this purpose.

Using his hydraulics and engineering skills, it was pulled on wooden rollers by ropes to the bank of the Nile opposite Luxor by hundreds of workmen.

With French collectors also in the area possibly looking to acquire the statue, he then sent workmen to Esna to gain a suitable boat and in the meantime carried out further excavations in Thebes.