My name is Ozymandias, King...
Illustration
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, you mighty, and despair."
Inspired by the colossal statuary of Rameses II of Egypt, Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem invokes the pride of the ancient ruler, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, who thought himself an equal to any God.
Rameses was the longest-reigning king of the eighteenth dynasty, under which Egypt regained some of the lost glory of the Old Kingdom, the builders of the great pyramids. Rameses' pride knew few bounds: many monuments of ancient Egypt are scarred by his attempts to carve his name oven those of his predecessors. Even though his own achievements were highly significant in their own right, he was not satisfied being known as anything less than Egypt's greatest king.
And what has it come to? Rameses' body today lies mummified in the Cairo museum, infested by flies and fungus. Shelley's poem goes on to say: "Nothing beside remains ..."
--Walker
Inspired by the colossal statuary of Rameses II of Egypt, Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem invokes the pride of the ancient ruler, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, who thought himself an equal to any God.
Rameses was the longest-reigning king of the eighteenth dynasty, under which Egypt regained some of the lost glory of the Old Kingdom, the builders of the great pyramids. Rameses' pride knew few bounds: many monuments of ancient Egypt are scarred by his attempts to carve his name oven those of his predecessors. Even though his own achievements were highly significant in their own right, he was not satisfied being known as anything less than Egypt's greatest king.
And what has it come to? Rameses' body today lies mummified in the Cairo museum, infested by flies and fungus. Shelley's poem goes on to say: "Nothing beside remains ..."
--Walker
