During the past two generations, there have been many studies on the structure, organization, and "function" of the gods of the Levantine and ancient Near Eastern worlds. In this important study, Lowell Handy provides new directions for thinking on this crucial topic, arguing that the structure of the pantheon worshiped in Syria-Palestine mirrored the social structure of the city-states in that region.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ozymandias
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ozymandias
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The most famous couplet of the poem. Why are the two lines so memorable?
- It is a bold, confident statement, declaring a strange, long, harsh-sounding, exotic name.
- The first line, the only one which contains the king’s name, has an extra syllable, a departure from the regular iambic pentameter of the rest of the poem, to draw attention to his megalomania ,
- The term ‘King of Kings’ has a rhythmic, Old Testament biblical resonance; the Pharaoh is setting himself up as a god. (Note also that, like many today, Shelley was an atheist, so the ‘King of Kings’ could be a way of him mocking religion.)
- The archaic term ‘ye, mighty’ distances the reader; the space of centuries increases the mystique.
- The final words of the couplet ‘… and despair’ are chilling and signify inhuman cruelty. If read aloud the two words sound slow, elongated and ominous, with a dropping pitched syllable at the end.
Most importantly, much of the poem’s power lies in the fact that you can read “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” in two ways:
The way Ozymandias intended it. As the inscription on the massive statue of a great pharaoh, it was supposed to inspire dread and awe. He believed other leaders of men (“ye mighty”) must despair at the results of his sublime power (his “works”).
Ironically. During his lifetime Ozymandias was a feared and respected leader. Now he is a faint memory, a broken statue in the desert. As a Romantic poet, Shelley emphasized the incredible power of nature and the frailty of mankind. Here he suggests that the mighty ought to despair at how utterly forgotten Ozymandias has become. The desert–nature incarnate–has swallowed the vain pride of a once great man, and the same fate awaits the powerful of today.
Furthermore, the name ‘Ozymandias’ is not the original name of this pharaoh (originally Rameses II) but this is significant as it shows how even his name has been stripped from his once powerful identity.
As David Mikics points out:
…the pharaoh’s “works” are nowhere to be seen, in this desert wasteland. The kings that he challenges with the evidence of his superiority are the rival rulers of the nations he has enslaved, perhaps the Israelites and Canaanites known from the biblical account. The son and successor of Ozymandias/Rameses II, known as Merneptah, boasts in a thirteenth-century BCE inscription…that “Israel is destroyed; its seed is gone”—an evidently overoptimistic assessment.
For Breaking Bad fans, the use of “Ozymandias” as the title of a famous 2013 episode was particularly apt.
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“King of Kings” is an interesting choice of phrase, since it is a title that originates with Persian and Assyrian kings, rather than with Egyptian pharaohs (
). This may be a factual oversight, but if we give Shelley the benefit of the doubt, it could also be a nod to the number of later rulers and figures who would come to describe themselves as such. There have been many “kings of kings,” none of whom are still obeyed, a reality which further emphasizes the unremarkable nature of Ozymandias' works when compared against the breadth of known history. If this is considered, the poem shows us Ozymandias undone by two genres of time: historical (through his now meaningless title) and geological (through dissolution into sand).
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What is this?
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What is this?
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Wayne wants to craft Hip-Hop into a hard hitting, raw sound, like before. Instead, what he finds is a game mostly concerned with pop music, synth sounds, and lacking lyrical content and delivery. Rather than being bitter and hard, the game is angel food.
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What is this?
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What is this?
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What is this?
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An old track (circa 2006) of Curren$y spitting over the classic Wu-Tang Clan “C.R.E.A.M.” leaks its way onto the net.
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The skills the Patriots bring to the table are enough for Chiddy to reach a conclusion on the hypothesis of victory. He expects a Super Bowl ring, bitch.
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