Ozymandias

Throughout his career, Shelley dedicated a substantial amount of energy to criticizing tyranny, both in his literary works and his personal life. The most important theme in “Ozymandias” is the ephemerality of power and fame. Shelley does not contest that Ozymandias’s fame and power were real when he was alive; rather, he highlights the fact that they were fleeting. All power is temporary, no matter how rich, angry, or forceful the ruler.

For a staunch republican like Shelley, Pharaonic Egypt was a potent symbol of the fall of monarchical power. One of the longest-lived civilizations on earth, Egypt’s monuments, ravaged by time, were being seen for the first time in English society in Shelley’s day. While the remains of the Ramses statue had not yet arrived at the British Museum, its discovery by archaeologists was announced earlier that year in 1817.

For Shelley, these monuments embodied a once-great empire laid low. The poem’s subject, Ramses II, was known especially for his military conquests and many public works projects. He might even be the tyrannical pharaoh referred to in the Bible’s Book of Exodus, though it is unclear if Shelley would have been aware of this connection. It is likely that the poet had a more contemporary symbol of imperialism in mind: Napoleon Bonaparte.