Rameses II, or Rameses the Great, is often considered Egypt's most powerful pharaoh, leading expeditions that are commemorated in inscriptions on ancient buildings. He built a city, Pi-Ramesses, and other monuments, temples, and cities.
Ramesses the Great ruled Egypt from 1279 BC to 1213 BC, and is traditionally believed to be the Pharaoh that Moses dealt with in the book of Exodus, when Pharaoh was forced to let the Israeli slaves go.
Although I've never been to Egypt myself, I know that going to see the pyramids and monuments in the Valley of the Kings and other ancient parts is a great attraction. These monuments look old and crumbling now; no one would do anything other than study them, admire them, and then go back to their own lives.
Ozymandias is the Greek name for Rameses the Great. I have always pondered Percy Shelley's poem as a cautionary tale of trying to be too important in this world.
***
Ozymandias
I met a traveler 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."
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
