Ozymandias

In December 1817, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Ozymandias, one of the greatest poems in the English language. His poem was inspired by seeing a guest of his, Horace Smith, write a poem on a similar topic. The central theme of "Ozymandias" is the inevitable decline of all people, and of the empires they build, however mighty in their own time.

Ozymandias (also spelled Osymandias) is another name for one of Egypt's most famous rulers, Ramses II (or Ramses the Great). He was born in 1314 B.C. and ruled Egypt for 66 years as the third king of the 19th Dynasty. His exact age at death is uncertain, but it was between 90 and 99. Ramses was a warrior king and a builder of temples, statues and other monuments. He was pharaoh at the time Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, as recounted in the second book of the Bible, Exodus(derived from the Greek word for departure).

"Ozymandias" has two settings. The first is the place where the narrator meets the traveler (Line 1); the second is the setting in the traveler's tale about a crumbling statue of an Egyptian king (pharaoh). The statue is at the site of the ancient Egyptian capital, Thebes (about 420 miles south of Cairo), which was divided by the Nile River. On the eastern side of the river was the city proper. On the western side was a vast cemetery, or city of the dead, where statues, temples, and tombs memorialized the pharaohs. Living at the site were priests who conducted religious services and artisans and laborers who designed, built, and maintained the monuments.

The reign of Ramses II marks the last peak of Egypt's imperial power. After his death Egypt was forced on the defensive but managed to maintain its suzerainty over Palestine and the adjacent territories until the later part of the 20th dynasty, when, under the weak kings who followed Ramses III, internal decay ended its power beyond its borders.