As will be seen, “Ozymandias” utilizes puns to explore a variety of issues concerning the ravages of time and the effacement of memory.īeginning with the first line, the narrating voice creates doubt as to the chronological time in which his poem is set, stating that “I met a traveller from an antique land.” The word antique creates the first ambiguity in the poem. This device, like the subject matter of the poem, was familiar to the classical world and much discussed and written about in its rhetorical treatises. Thus, Shelley’s play on the word “mock” makes this poem, in one sense, a pun-a rhetorical device that depends on similarity of sound for a multiplicity of meaning. Interestingly, a rather obscure meaning of the word “mock,” the origin of which is unknown, identifies the word with a stump and root of a tree, or refers to a large stick of wood, especially that burned at Christmas. It also means to imitate that object, usually for derision, or to produce an insincere or counterfeit version of the original object. The most significant key to understanding Shelley’s agenda in “Ozymandias” resides in the verb “to mock.” To mock most frequently means to treat an object, person, or idea with contempt or ridicule. These themes are prominent in “Ozymandias.” It is simultaneously a poem concerned with poetic effort and the anxiety of whether that effort will be remembered. It was a culture obsessed with time, and its fascination with the afterlife influenced all its earthly work and effort. or mutilated sphinx.Īncient Egyptian culture was a civilization obsessed with death and personal survival, an obsession indicated by its foremost occupation-the construction of inscribed funerary monuments- pyramids, tombs, obelisks, stelae, and sarcophagi.

Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange / Sculptured on alabaster obelisk. “His wander step, / Obedient to high thoughts, has visited / The awful ruins of the days of old. Shelley’s own interest in Egyptology is manifested in many of his poems, such as Alastor or, the Spirit of Solitude, where the young poet, who has gone in search of the origin of things, journeys to Egypt and Abyssinia, to the origin of writing.

Furthermore, in 1806 Mohammed Ali, a soldier of fortune, installed himself as pasha (a man of great rank) of Egypt, and during his long reign, he encouraged artistic competition between the French and English, resulting in a flood of Egypt artifacts in both Europe and America. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he was accompanied by a group of 150 scientists and artists who came along to survey the newly conquered territory. Prior to Champollion’s discovery, the historical events of the early 19th century helped to awaken an interest in this ancient culture. In the 1820s, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing on the newly discovered Rosetta Stone.

The 19th century developed a great interest in the ancient Egyptian culture, and that interest was the beginning of modern Egyptology. According to Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century B.C., the largest statue in Egypt bore the inscription, “I am Ozymandias, king of kings if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.” A controversy continues today regarding the 19th-century’s unquestioning reliance on the identity of Diodorus’s sources few of his sources survive outside his own work, making it difficult to ascertain who or what is being quoted verbatim. His reign marked the height of Egypt’s imperial power. In addition to his wars with the Hittites and Libyans, Ramses is known for his extensive building projects, as well as the many colossal statues of him throughout Egypt. Written sometime in late 1817 and published on Januin Leigh Hunt’s Examiner, “Ozymandias” is a poem that bears the Greek name for the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses II (13th century B.C.). The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias art