2/2/2024 0 Comments Ozymandias quote![]() However, as time-travellers from the future, we are allowed to enter through the impressive pylon, a gateway with sloping sides (you can see at once how electricity pylons got their name) and find ourselves in the first of a number of courts. Very few people were entitled to enter the sacred space, that was reserved for the pharaoh: carefully chosen members of his entourage, and the priests. The hypostyle hall – a forest of 48 columns Egyptian temple complexes tend to share a similar ground plan that is, they comprise a number of buildings arranged in a rectangle within an exterior, enclosing wall. So let’s take a look at what, exactly, there is to see at Ramesses II’s Royal Cult Temple. He obviously believed that the statues were then still standing – and had already done so for 1200 years. (*A cubit was the length between the tip of the fingers and the elbow – roughly 18-22 inches.)ĭiodorus probably travelled to Egypt between 60-56 BC but may not have reached the Ramesseum itself, over 400 miles to the south, and relied on others’ eyewitness accounts which are now lost. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.’ The inscription upon it runs: ‘King of Kings am I, Osymandyas. This is what Diodorus tells us … ‘beside the entrance (to the temple) 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. It was not unusual for the members of Shelley’s literary circle to challenge each other to write competing sonnets on a specific topic, and Shelley and his banker friend, Horace Smith, chose a passage from the Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, (c.80-20 B.C.) describing an immense Egyptian statue of ‘Ozymandyas’, the Ancient Greek interpretation of Ramesses’ throne name, ‘Usermaatra’. So, how are they connected? To start with Shelley. The story of how Shelley’s poem came about is a curious one, and the colossal archaeological remains also have a their own story to tell. The Ramesseum from the side: the second pylon (dilapidated and propped up by modern buttresses) is on the left and the hypostyle hall is on the right The thought occurred that a blog about the Ramesseum, Shelley, his poem, and the link with Ramesses II might be interesting. I have always loved the poem, and, recently, I was lucky enough to see the actual remains of ‘that colossal wreck’ for myself when I visited the Royal Cult Temple of Ramesses II (1279-1213 B.C.), also known as the Ramesseum, in Egypt. The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, Look on my words, ye mighty, and despair!’ The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, Tells that its sculptor well those passions read Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) by Amelia Curran, Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery. At his best, as in his sonnet Ozymandias, he is inimitable. But he was also intelligent and highly imaginative and has been described as ‘the poet of volcanic hope for a better world’. He was thrown out of Eton for expressing atheistic views. He disapproved of matrimony – but married twice he was a vegetarian (rare at the time), a republican and a Radical. ![]() The short but tumultuous life of the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), one of the greatest of the Romantic poets of the early 19 th century, shows him to have been a man of contradictions.
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