Ozymandias. By Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Shelley's vision of Ozymandias.  David Roberts, Fragments of the Great Colossi (of Rameses II), at the Memnonium (Ramesseum), 1838.

Ozymandias. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose. Vol. 1. Edited by Harry Buxton Forman. London: Reeves and Turner, 1880. Originally published in The Examiner, January 11, 1818, p. 24. Also here. (Horace Smith’s version on p. 74).

Shelley:

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.

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s haunting sonnet “Ozymandias” is one of the most powerful poems ever written. Shelley, inspired by travelers’ descriptions of Egypt’s fallen grandeur, wrote a poetic meditation on the death of civilizations and the hubris of autocrats and kings; how even the greatest monuments to their megalomania and vanity are destined to crumble into the dust. The Ozymandias of the poem was of Rameses II (r. 1279-1213 BC), often considered the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The name Ozymandias is a Greek transliteration of the first part of Rameses’s throne name Usermaatre Setepenre, “Ra’s mighty truth, chosen of Ra.” The statue in the poem may have been based on descriptions of the fallen statue of Rameses at the Ramesseum in Thebes, which would be drawn by the Scottish artist David Roberts in 1838, twenty years after Shelley wrote his poem.


The Library of History, Book I, Chap. 47. By Diodorus Siculus. Written c. 60 BC.

Diodorus’s description of the Ozymandias statue:

Ten stades from the first tombs, he says, in which, according to tradition, are buried the concubines of Zeus, stands a monument of the king known as Osymandyas. At its entrance there is a pylon, constructed of variegated stone, two plethra in breadth and forty-five cubits high; passing through this one enters a rectangular peristyle, built of stone, four plethra long on each side; it is supported, in place of pillars, by monolithic figures sixteen cubits high, wrought in the ancient manner as to shape; and the entire ceiling, which is two fathoms wide, consists of a single stone, which is highly decorated with stars on a blue field. Beyond this peristyle there is yet another entrance and pylon, in every respect like the one mentioned before, save that it is more richly wrought with every manner of relief; beside the entrance are three statues, each of a single block of black stone from Syene, of which one, that is seated, is the largest of any in Egypt, the foot measuring over seven cubits, while the other two at the knees of this, the one on the right and the other on the left, daughter and mother respectively, are smaller than the one first mentioned. And it is not merely for its size that this work merits approbation, but it is also marvellous by reason of its artistic quality and excellent because of the nature of the stone, since in a block of so great a size there is not a single crack or blemish to be seen. The inscription upon it runs: “King of Kings am I, Osymandyas. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.” There is also another statue of his mother standing alone, a monolith twenty cubits high, and it has three diadems on its head, signifying that she was both daughter and wife and mother of a king.


Travelers from an Antique Land: Shelley’s Inspiration for “Ozymandias.” By John Rodenbeck. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 24 (2004).

Exploring Exodus: The Oppression. By Nahum M. Sarna. The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 49, No. 2 (June 1986).

Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” By Johnstone Parr. Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 6 (Winter 1957).

Ozymandias and the Travelers. By H.M. Richmond. Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 11 (Winter 1962).

Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Diodorus Siculus. By J. Gwyn Griffiths. The Modern Language Review, Vol. 43, No. 1 (January 1948).

Ozymandias: Shelley, Horace Smith, and Denon. By Eugene M. Waith. Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 44 (1995).

Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt During the Campaigns of General Bonaparte in that Country. Vol. 2. By Vivant Denon. New York: Heard and Forman, 1803. Reference to Osymandias on p. 252.

Denon’s description of the Ozymandias statue:

At the north of these temples we found the ruins of two figures of granite, overthrown and broken. They might have been about thirty-six feet in height: their attitude was the usual one, of the right foot advanced, and the arms hanging down beside the body; and they doubtless adorned the gate of some large edifices, the ruins of which are now buried under the soil. I then went to the two colossi, supposed to be those of Memnon, and took an accurate drawing of their actual state of preservation. These two pieces of art, which are without grace, expression, or action, have nothing which seduces the judgment; but their proportions are faultless, and this simplicity of attitude, and want of decided expression, has something of majesty and seriousness, which cannot fail to strike the beholder. If the limbs of these figures had been distorted in order to express some violent passion, the harmony of their outline would have been lost, and they would be less conspicuous at the distance at which they begin to strike the eye, and produce their effect on the mind of the spectator, for they may be distinguished as far as four leagues off. To pronounce upon the character of these statues, it is necessary to have seen them at several intervals, and to have long reflected on them; and after this it often happens, that what is at first considered as the work of the infancy of art, becomes assigned to its maturer age. If the group of the Laocoon, which speaks to the soul as well as to the eyes, were executed in a proportion of sixty feet, it would lose all its beauty, and would not present so striking a mass of workmanship as this; in short, if these statues were more agreeable, they would be less beautiful, as they would then cease to be (what they now are) eminently monumental, a character which should belong peculiarly to that outdoor sculpture, which is intended to harmonize with architecture, a style of sculpture which the Egyptians have carried to the highest pitch of perfection.

I have no hesitation in appealing for the truth of this system, to the happy result which has always attended the use of this severe style by the moderns, and the partiality which all the artists in our Egyptian expedition have acquired for the grave and simple, a partiality which is a most decisive proof that its beauty is not merely an idea.

I again examined the block of granite, which lies between these two statues, and I am still more convinced that it is the ruins of the famous colossal statue of Osymandias, who, on the inscription, braved both the ravages of time and the pride of men; and that the two figures which are left standing, are those of his wife and daughter. I am likewise persuaded, that in a much later period, travellers have chosen to suppose one of the latter statues to be that of Memnon, that they might not be supposed to have come away from Egypt without seeing it, and according to the usual progress of enthusiasm, that they have fancied they heard the sound which it was famed for uttering at the rising of the sun.

Photograph of the Ozymandias colossus at the Ramesseum