The Ramesseum is just a short walk from my hotel, so I hiked up there in the late afternoon as the day was cooling. This was a mortuary temple for Ramses II, and parts of it are quite well preserved.
Like everything Ramses did, this place is built on the grandest possible scale. It must have been truly astonishing in its day. I had the entire place just about to myself, a little group of restorers were pottering about over to one side, and a decrepit old temple Guardian dogging me in hopes of some baksheesh. If he had spoken a bit more English, I could have told him he would have got a bigger tip if he had gone off and left me in peace.
Only the head and shoulders of this massive fallen statue remains - it is the inspiration for Shelley's 'Ozymandias', although he apparently didn't see first-hand for himself.
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.”
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