English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was inspired to write his sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818) by a colossal granite bust of Ramses II, a pharaoh of ancient Egypt. The statue was among several ancient Egyptian artifacts that had been removed from the country as a result of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. The Ramses bust arrived at the British Museum in London in 1818, where it remains. Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith engaged in a friendly competition to write a sonnet about the statue. Both poems were originally titled “Ozymandias,” the Greek name for Ramses.
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