The image of Egypt in Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
P.B. Shelley, Ozymandias

“Ozymandias is a sonnet, written in iambic pentameter, and gains much of its power from the taut
compression of its language. Its vivid evocation of the ruined statue underlines the hubris of
Ozymandias’ proud boast ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ The irony is, of course, that the
Mighty will despair – not at the power of Ozymandias, but at the recognition that their power is
ultimately transitory.”

Ozymandias = Greek name for Ramses II (1304-1237 BC): his statue stood on the oppposite bank of the
Nile to Luxor, near Thebes. Also known as Ramesses the Great, King of Kings (cf Diodorus Siculus), he is
traditionally believed to be the Pharaoh of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. He ruled for 67 years. His
patron deity was the sun-god Ra. At birth, he was given the name Ramesses (“Fashioned by Ra”) later,
when he became pharaoh, he took other names (“throne names”), including User-maat-re (Strength and
Truth of Ra), Setep-en-re (Chosen by Ra), or both: User-maat-re Setep-en-re.

The Greeks rendered User-maat-re as Ozymandias, which is how Ramesses has long been known in the
West. Diodorus Siculus visited Ramesses’s mortuary temple at Thebes in the 1st century AD, the
Ramesseum, and recorded a thousand-yearold inscription on the pedestal of one of the site’s colossal
statues: “King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him
surpass one of my works” (Library of History 1.47). These words inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem
(1817), in which the poet, like the modern city of Cairo, seem to mock the pharaoh for his pomp: A
traveler in an “antique land” comes across the pedestal of a statue now “two trunkless legs of stone”,
whose “shattered visage” lies half sunk in the sand, bearing the inscription, “My name is Ozymandias,
King of Kings, / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Note thus the romantic irony. (stroe)
“Promptly we are transported to a landscape of fierce imagery, where in the use of a few short
words, seemingly unrestrained and accented by its meter and mannerisms, the effectiveness of
the English language to portray a complex idea becomes self evident. A solitary statue remains
of a once great civilization, serving as the last great physical relic of the state of mankind before
us, since consumed by the insatiable and indiscriminate destroyer that is time. Here this is
portrayed as a barren landscape, ruled over only by sand, governed by the heavens and nature,
which despite its power, appears to us as the complete absence of cardinal or predominant
governing.
At its inception, a distinct theme is presented in the poem; one of mortality and the passage of
time. The statue’s inscription,“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye
mighty, and despair!” serves to present this cycle, as well as lay the foundations for an ironic
tone wielded frequently. Ozymandias was no simple man, his statue implies, as he was above
even the mightiest of kings. Yet nothing remains of his grandeur, because Ozymandias’ wealth,
power, and prestige was no defense against the mortality of all mankind.
“