Hadrian heads to the British Museum

The head, weighing half a tonne and 80 centimetres high, was discovered less than a year ago on an archaeological dig in Turkey. It has never been on public display before - not even in Turkey - and will form the centrepiece to the exhibition which opens on 24 July and runs until the end of October.

The bust would have topped a five-metre tall statue of the Roman emperor, of which so far only the right leg and right foot have been found. Those pieces will also go on display for an exhibition that has sold 14,000 tickets in advance.

The bust is believed to have been carved between 120 and 130 AD when Hadrian, who reigned from 117 to 138 ADand who died at the age of 62, was middle aged. The head was discovered in Roman baths and is made from marble. Experts are certain it is Hadrian, not least because of his distinctive ear lobes.

"This head has been out of the ground for less than a year and to be able to unveil it to the world is fantastic," said Thorsten Opper, the exhibition's curator. "It is a very remarkable feature in all Hadrian's portraits, he had diagonal ear lobe creases. If you look at his ear lobes a deep diagonal line exists in both lobes. There is a strange statistical link between that crease and coronary heart disease and it is quite possible he suffered from heart disease."

Experts believe the head is likely to be a naturalistic portrait because it would be odd to include the detail of the ear lobes but ignore the rest of his facial features.

Hadrian was the most travelled of Roman emperors. He arrived in Britain in around 122 AD to crush a revolt and instigated the building of the 73-mile wall that bears his name, separating England from Scotland.

With 170 objects from 11 countries on display, the Hadrian exhibition is possibly the largest staged by the British Museum. It will demonstrate there is more to Hadrian than just wall-building, showing him as a military mastermind who withdrew Roman troops from Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq); a ruthless emperor who massacred 600,000 Jews crushing a Judean revolt; and a lover of architecture and Greek culture.