Today, Ramses II’s burial site, the Ramesseum, is a vacant and rather sad place. The heads have been struck off the Osirian pillars. Fallen stones and broken sculptures lie scattered like the cast-off playthings of a young giant.
“Ozymandias” was one name for Ramses II. It was by this name that the Romantic poet Percy Shelley referred to one of the damaged statues, in his sonnet of that title. Shelley describes a stone colossus, put up by a mighty ancient emperor in a bid for posterity:
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 words of Shelley’s broken colossus speak of the fragility and impermanence of empires and manmade things.
Written in 1818, when Britain’s global hegemony was greater than ever before, “Ozymandias” expressed a timely and moving indictment of empire. The Napoleonic Wars had left Britain triumphant. But they had also left it with massive debts, widespread unemployment, huge numbers of demobilized soldiers, industrial discontent, and a visibly unrepresentative Parliament in need of reform. The “Peterloo massacre” of 1819, at which soldiers opened fire on an apparently peaceful workers’ rally at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester, pointed to the uglier possibilities of the peace.
It looked as if just the things that Napoleon had represented might be visited on Britain, too. “Ozymandias” held a mirror up _________ Britain that reflected a frightening image _________ .

Adapted from Jasanoff, Maya. Edge of empire: lives, culture, and conquest in the East, 1750-1850. N. York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. p. 261.