Caesar Augustus
The Meroë Bust

Now residing in the British Museum, this statue of Gaius Octavius Thurinus, better known as Caesar Augustus, is one of the few we can be sure were made during the lifetime of the emperor. It was discovered in 1910 in what is now the Republic of Sudan in the ancient town of Meroë. It turns out the kings of Meroë didn't like the Romans nosing around in the south of Egypt, and in 25 BC - only two years after Octavian became emperor - made a foray into Egypt where among other things, they stole a statue of Augustus.

Refusing demands to return the statue, the Kushites broke it up and took the head back where they buried it in front of a temple. That way the worshipers could symbolically walk over their enemy.

Ironically, it was burying the statue in the sand so far away that lets modern historians 1) know the statue was cast during Augustus's lifetime and 2) kept it preserved until it was found in 1910.

References

The Meroe Head of Augustus, Thorsten Opper, British Museum Press, 2015

Images of Power from Ancient Rome to Salvador Dali, Mary Beard, A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, 2011.

The image above is from a photograph that is public domain in the US, albeit tweaked up a bit for this display.