Tuesday, October 30, 2018

What does the inscription on the pedestal suggest about the kind of person Ozymandias was?

The inscription on the pedestal of Ozymandias’s statue read, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
The fact that he called himself the “King of Kings” suggests that Ozymanidas was very powerful and also perhaps rather proud and arrogant. Ozymandias is the Greek name for Rameses II, an Egyptian pharaoh who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE. We know that Rameses II was indeed very powerful. He won many military campaigns and made Egypt a powerful and wealthy nation. The inscription, however, implies that being very powerful was not enough for Ozymandias. He wanted to be, and seemed certain that he was, the most powerful.
The second part of the inscription is phrased as a demand. He wants people, and specifically other powerful or “Mighty” people, to look upon what he has achieved and despair. He wants these other people to lose any hope of being more powerful than him and to be overawed by his power. It’s also possible that “ye Mighty” is a reference to the gods, which would make Ozymandias’s declaration of power even more arrogant. The exclamation mark at the end of the demand suggests an insistent, fierce tone. Ozymandias likely did not tolerate anybody who refused to acknowledge his power or to treat him accordingly.

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