What I’ve Learned from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
Once upon a time, reigns a king who thought himself eternal.
The first time I found the name “Ozymandias” was not in Shelley’s poem. Rather, it was in the 1986 graphic novel Watchmen, which features an anti-villain called Adrian Veidt, who uses the name Ozymandias as his alias. I liked the complexity of Veidt’s character and Watchmen’s plot, and how different it was from other superhero stories.
But then I got curious. From Watchmen I learned Ozymandias is the title of a poem, so I looked it up, read it, and I was wonderstruck. The prose is captivating, and the lesson is profound. No wonder it transcends time and borders and inspires a breadth of other works. Later, I recalled that the highest-rated episode of my favorite show, Breaking Bad, was also inspired by and alludes to Shelley’s poem. The episode was aptly titled, “Ozymandias.”
But what’s so great about the poem?
Well, let’s read it together.
Note: From here on I will write “Ozymandias” in italic to refer to Shelley’s poem, and “Ozymandias” in regular font to refer to the individual.
Shelley’s poem
Percy Bysshe Shelley, also known as Glirastes, is a prominent English Romantic poet who lived from 1792–1822. In 1818, he wrote Ozymandias for The Examiner. The poem received critical acclaim, and became arguably his most well-known work, cited widely across literature and pop culture.
The poem goes like this (emphasis mine):
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.”
The first impression I got was that the poem’s incredibly visual. These are just words, but somehow they vividly illustrate the scene as well as any painting would. Upon reading the poem, an image formed in my mind: The vestiges of a ruined colossus, in the middle of a vast and empty desert.
People say an image is worth a thousand words, but in the case of Ozymandias, the opposite also applies: Shelley painted an evocative image with only a few rows of words.
Later, I found this video that visualized Ozymandias really closely to how I pictured it in my mind (the audio was taken from Bryan Cranston’s reading of Ozymandias for Breaking Bad’s season 5 trailer):
Okay, so that’s Shelley’s poem. But who is the poem’s namesake, anyway? Who is Ozymandias, and what can we learn from him?
Who is Ozymandias?
Ozymandias is the Greek name of the pharaoh Ramesses II, derived from his regnal name Usermaatre.
He ruled as the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, and is often regarded as the most powerful and most celebrated pharaoh of the New Kingdom (Egypt’s most prosperous time), earning him the monikers “Ramesses the Great” and “Great Ancestor.”
After a pharaoh’s 30th year on the throne, there’s a tradition to celebrate his reign in a jubilee called the Sed Festival, to honor and rejuvenate his power. The festivals were held only for those whose reign exceeded 30 years — only the most powerful and longest-living among the pharaohs. After a pharaoh’s first Sed Festival starts at the 30-year mark, another one is held every three years (although sometimes Ozymandias held it every two years).
Eventually, Ozymandias celebrated an unprecedented thirteen or fourteen Sed Festivals, amounting to 66 years of reign — the longest in Egypt’s history, unheard of in the life of any other pharaoh.
Furthermore, merely halfway through those 66 years, Ozymandias’ achievements had eclipsed nearly all of his greatest predecessors. This included bringing peace, maintaining Egyptian borders, and building numerous majestic monuments across the empire.
His country was more prosperous and powerful than it had been in nearly a century and remained at the peak of its civilization until its eventual demise.
Lessons from Ozymandias
Now, after learning about Shelley’s poem and the historical Ozymandias, what lessons can we extract from them?
The biggest and most obvious lesson from Ozymandias, arguably, is one of hubris. Many have interpreted the colossus as a symbol of the pharaoh’s colossal pride, further emphasized by the inscription on its pedestal, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” — a paraphrase of Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (the so-called “traveller from an antique land” in Shelley’s poem) describing the massive statue in his Bibliotheca Historica:
“King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.”
The way I understand it, that inscription is a challenge. Ozymandias felt immense pride in his work, so much so that he asserted with absolute certainty that no one else would ever surpass him.
But of course, no matter who you are, there will always be someone to rise above you. This reminds me of an Indonesian proverb:
“Di atas langit masih ada langit.”
(“Above the sky there’s another sky.”)
Hubris is a common theme across many mythologies, and any story that involves it always ends on a low note.
For example, in Islamic mythology, Iblis’ hubris, his refusal to prostrate before Adam, is the sin that got him banished from heaven. Or Icarus in Greek mythology, who died after flying too close to the sun — symbolically “trespassing into the domain of the gods.”
Ozymandias, despite being a historical figure, is no exception to this trope. Supposedly, Shelley only took inspiration from Diodorus Siculus’ description of Ozymandias’ statue, as nothing remains of the real statue itself — not even “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” and “a shattered visage.”
This brings us to another lesson: one of transience. Ozymandias ruled for 66 years, the longest of any pharaoh, and in that 66 years, he constructed things that lasted well beyond his time — but even then, they’re not eternal.
By the time we came into this world, barely anyone remembers the name Ramesses II or Ozymandias — and even when someone does remember, it’s not because of the man himself, but the mention of him in a poem.
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” becomes really fitting, in an ironic way: I did despair because there’s nothing left to look upon.
Coda: Nihil aeternum est
“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.”
— Camille Paglia
I often wonder if anything I do even matter. Even the greatest men and the empires they erect are transient, their legacies abandoned and their names are forgotten. No one defeats time, not even the great Ozymandias.
Nihil aeternum est — nothing lasts forever.
This essay was originally published in History of Yesterday on 18 November 2021.