Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc.

Shelley's "Ozymandias" Author(s): Johnstone Parr Source: Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. 6 (Winter, 1957), pp. 31-35 Published by: Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30210020 . Accessed: 15/02/2011 21:53 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ksaa. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Shelley's By

HELLEY'S

Ozymandias JOHNSTONE PARR

SONNET entitled

Ozymandias and signed "Glirastes" was published in Leigh Hunt's Examiner on January 11, 1818 (p. 24). I METa Traveller from an antique land, Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. 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 despairl No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. GLIRASTES.

The ultimate source of information concerning Ozymandias is the account in Diodorus Siculus' Bibliotheca Historica (first century B.C.). Diodorus remarks that at the second gateway of the funereal temple or "tomb" of an Egyptian king known as "Osymandyas" are three statues, each of one entire stone, the workmanship of Memnon of Sienitas. One of these, made in a sitting posture, is the greatest in all Egypt, the measure of his foot exceeding seven cubits .... This piece is not only commendable for its greatness, but admirable for its cut and workmanship, and the excellency of the stone. In so great a work there is not to be discerned the least flaw, or any other blemish. Upon it there is this inscription:-"I am Osymandyas, king of kings; if any would know how great I am, and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my works."x

1. The Historical Library of Diodorus

the Cicilian . . . , trans. G. Booth (London, 1814), I, 53 (Bk. I, ch. iv). This translation first appeared in 17oo, superseding that of

Henry Cogan which appeared in 1653. See also Diodorus of Sicily, ed. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb edition (London, 1933), I, 167169, which translation gives only as a vari-

32

KEATS-SHELLEY JOURNAL

No other ancient or classical historian-Herodotus, Strabo, Pausanias, Thucydides, Xenophon, Arrian, Tacitus, or Pliny-mentions Ozymandias or his statue. Historians and archaeologists of the twentieth century seem to be agreed that Ozymandias is the Greek name for the notorious Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II (1301-1234 B.C.), and that the statue of Ozymandias

stood near this pharaoh's funereal temple at Thebes now known as the Ramesseum.2 This gigantic colossus, computed to have been about 6o feet high and to have weighed iooo tons, lies in a highly mutilated state among the ruins of the Ramesseum today. A photograph of its remains in Breasted's History of Egypt (1919) may be compared with a drawing of the statue that appeared in Sir Henry Light's Travels in Egypt (1818). See Plate I. The photograph in Breasted's book was taken from virtually

the same spot upon which the artist stood to draw the remains for Light. A second comparison can be made by observing the view of the statue from its other side as it appears in Wilson's The Burden of Egypt (1951) and in the French Commission's Description de l'Egypte (1812).

See Plate II.s From these representations we can observe that all of the statue which now remains is a part from the waist upwards, and that all that remained in Shelley's day was a half-torso, a mutilated head, and part of a foot.4 In Shelley's day the face of the head was so obliterated that no one could have discerned a "frown," a "wrinkled lip," or a ant the statement (in the Greek text of Teubner, 1853, p. 66) that the statue was executed by Memnon of Sienitas. The point is significant because any traveler-historian mentioning the "statue of Memnon" does not necessarily refer to one of the famous twin Colossi of Memnon, different statues several hundred yards away from that of Ozymandias. Incidentally, the Cogan translation (pp. 32-33) also renders the expression "the workmanship of Memnon." 2. See James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt, 2nd ed. (New York, 1919), pp. 423 ff.; H. R. Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, 6th ed. (London, 1924), pp. 316-318; James Baikie, The Life of the Ancient East (New York, 1923), p. 118; John A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt (Chicago, 1951), PP. 243 ft. Hall (Deputy-Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum) maintains that Ramses II and his son Meneptah were respectively the Biblical pharaohs of the Oppression and the Exodus. Hall, pp. 403-404. 3. This scholarly and accurate work of the Commission appeared in an expensive

set of twenty huge volumes entitled Commission des monuments d'Egypte (Paris, the first volume of which, De18o9-1828), scription gdndrale de Thdbes, compiled by MM. Jollois and DeVilliers, contained minutely detailed descriptions of the statue of Ozymandias. The volume of Planches which pictured all the monuments appeared in 1812. 4. The learned traveler-historian Dr. Richard Pococke visited Thebes in the eighteenth century and recorded the statue's measurements: "There are ruins . . . of a very large colossal statue; it is broke off about the middle of the trunk, the head is six feet broad; from the top of the head to the bottom of the neck, it measures eleven feet; . .. it is twenty-one feet broad at the shoulders; . .. and the foot is four feet eight inches broad." A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (London, 1742); cited from the reprint in John Pinkerton, General Collection of Voyages (London, 1808-1814), XV, 248-hereafter cited as Pococke.

"Statue of Memnon, Thrown Down at Thebes" (Henry

Light,

Travels

in Egypt,

"Fragments of Thousand-Ton (James Henry

Breasted,

A History

London,

1818, p. i1.)

Colossus of Ramses II"

of Egypt,

New York, 1919, p. 442.)

PLATE I. STATUE OF OZYMANDIAS

"Des D6bris de la Statue Colossale d'Osymandyas" (French Commission, Description de l'Egypte. Planches. Tome Deuxibme. Paris, 1812. Plate 25.)

"The Ramesseum at Thebes, with the Shattered Colossus of Ramses II" (John A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt, Chicago, 1951. Fig. 29a.) PLATE II. STATUE OF OZYMANDIAS

t~r

yw:. ~(~'

Y~

I

:~.

44 ~

~

II

*

~..f

""

4

:~#~tP~ ~

'".,

(

"p

..~P*

~p~p"p~

k~ ~ ~II~U15

PLATE III.

MAP SHOWING STATUE OF OZYMANDIAS

(French Commission, Description de l'Egypte. Planches. Tome Deuxieme. Paris, 1812. Plate 19.)

~

SHELLEY'S OZYMANDIAS

33

"sneer of cold command."5 And rather than "Two vast and trunkless legs" there were no legs at all. What were once legs had become shapeless masses of stone, with the exception of a part of a foot lying among the debris. The vainglorious epitaph-"on the pedestal" says Shelley--

was apparently not on the remains of the statue in Shelley's day; and even if it had been, no one could have read it in 1818 because Egyptian hieroglyphics were not understood until Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone in 1822. No pedestal is clearly seen in the drawings, but the map prepared by the French Commission (see Plate III) does indicate either a pedestal or the position where a pedestal had been; and, although definitely not the head of Ozymandias, nearby is a partly sunken head ("Tate colossale enfouie") of another statue. Since the statue lay precisely thus in Shelley's day, it becomes obvious that Shelley's description is not in conformity with the facts, and that any contemporary "traveller" who reported to Shelley such a description as we find in his sonnet had not seen the remains of the

statue. But it is also obvious that Shelley must have had information from some source other than Diodorus, for Diodorus reported the statue whole and without blemish and yet in Shelley's day it was partially demolished. Naturally inquiries have been made as to where Shelley learned of the colossus that he (or his "Traveller") purported to describe. No very convincing answers have been forthcoming. Some years ago Mr. Thompson examined the works of several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century traveler-historians (Pococke, Norden, Savary, Denon, Hamilton, Belzoni, and the French Commission) with the idea of discovering Shelley's source, deciding finally upon Savary.6 A year later Mr. Pettit suggested the work of M. Dominique-Vivant Denon.7 Recently I pointed out the existence of the epitaph in Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World,8 and subsequently Mr. Notopoulos cited it in Clarke's Travels in Africa and in the Quarterly Review.9 I have re5. Richard Henry Hamilton, President of the British African Association and possibly the foremost British authority on Egyptian antiquites in Shelley's day, visited Thebes and wrote in 18o9 that "The face [of the statue] is entirely obliterated." Egyptiaca (London, 1809), pp. 167-168. 6. D. W. Thompson, "Ozymandias," PQ, XVI (1937), 59-64; see also Carl Grabo, The Meaning of the "Witch of Atlas" (Chapel Hill, 1935), pp 143-146. 7. Henry Jewell Pettit, "Shelley and Denon's Voyage dans la Haute et la Basse Egypte," Revue de Littirature Comparde, XVIII (1938), 326-334.

8. Johnstone Parr, "Shelley's Ozymandias Again," MLR, XLVI (1951), 441-442; see also Gwyn Griffiths, "Shelley's Ozymandias and Diodorus Siculus," MLR, XLIII (1948), 80-84. g. James A. Notopoulos, "Shelley's Ozymandias Once Again," MLR, XLVIII (1953), 442-443. Incidentally, I find the passage in Clarke on p. 249 rather than p. 151. Notopoulos suggests also that "a mediate source" might be Horace Smith. Smith visited the Shelleys in December, 1817, and wrote a sonnet on Ozymandias as a corollary to Shelley's and published it in the Examiner on February 1, 1818 (p. 73). Smith is un-

34

KEATS-SHELLEY

JOURNAL

examined all of these possible sources, and many more besides,'0 with very little conviction that Shelley's account came from any of them. One must agree that Denon's account is striking; for he wrote (italics mine): At some paces from this gate [of the Ramesseum]are the remains of an enormous colossus; it has been wantonly shattered. .. . Is it the statue of...

Osymandyas?[Denon thinks not].... Osymandyashad..,. caused an inscription to be engravenon the pedestalof the statue, in which he defied the powerof man to destroythis monument... [but this statue]has disappeared, the hand of time and the teeth of envy appear to have united zealouslyin its destruction, and nothing of it remains but a shapeless rock of granite.'

One may be struck by the fact that some of the phraseology of Denon's account appears in Shelley's sonnet, and that Denon is the only traveler who actually states (as does Shelley) that the inscription was "on the pedestal." But Denon's description is otherwise not in accord with Shelley's, and nowhere does Denon cite the inscription which looms so large in Shelley's poem. This vainglorious epitaph which Diodorus reports having been on the statue is cited in the traveler-historian accounts of Pococke,12Norden,la Savary,'4and the French Commission,'" but not in those of Hamilton, Light, Denon, Belzoni, or Legh. It appeared also in several places where no description of the statue is given: in Raleigh's History, Clarke's Travels, the Quarterly Review; and (three unmentioned heretofore) in Pauli Ernesti Jablonski's Opuscula quibus Lingua et Antiquitas Aegyptiorum (Lyons, 1804), I, 189, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Fourth Edition, 1810, XV, 588), and Constantin F. Chasseboeuf de Volney's New Researches on Ancient History (London, 1819), II, 422.16

One may almost suspect that the arrogant epitaph of Ozymandias had become virtually a commonplace. If so, the account of Denon becomes more significant than hitherto admitted. likely inasmuch as his sonnet gives the statue a single leg, and his rendering of the epitaph is quite differentfrom Shelley's. lo. In addition, I have examined in vain the Egyptian travel-historiesof Leo Africanus, FrangoisBernier, Dr. Thomas Shaw, James Bruce, Mungo Park, Carstan Niebuhr, John Lewis Burckhardt,Henry Salt, Count de Forbin, and Thomas Legh. 11. Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, trans. Arthur Aiken (New York, 1803), II, 52-54. See also the translation of E. A. Kendal (London, 180o2),I, 18-922. Pettit reports nine editions or translationsof this work between 1802 and i8io. But Pettit

and Denon are both wrong in stating that Ozymandiasis mentioned by either Herodotus or Strabo;and Pettit fails to cite the part of the passage which notes that the statue is "shattered." 12. Pococke, p. 254. 13. Frederick Lewis Norden, Travels in Egypt and Nubia (London, 1757),II, 45. 14. Claude Etienne Savary, Letters on Egypt (London, 1787), II, 53. 15. Description de l'Egypte (Paris, 1809), I, 139, 147, 156. 16. The French edition was probably earlier; Volney published his Travels Through . .. Egypt in 1783.

SHELLEY'S OZYMANDIAS

35

No evidence seems to be conclusive that Shelley consulted any of the works yet suggested except Clarke's Travels and the Quarterly Review, both of which are listed in Mary's Journal and therefore presumably were observed by Shelley.'7 Both of these works cite the vainglorious epitaph, but neither of them contains any sort of description of the statue. As for Shelley's source, we are still unable to do more than speculate. We may assume that here he has modified his source material,'s or we may surmise that his information came from some source which mis-reported the facts. In connection with the latter possibility we may notice that among the people visiting the Shelleys in October and again in November of 1817 was a friend named Walter Coulson, who edited a London periodical called the Traveller.'9 The only pertinent copies of this magazine which I can discover are those for the first week of January, 1818, now in the British Museum. The October-December issues (wherein Shelley might have read a badly-reportedfeature article on Ozymandias) are not to be found. According to the Library of Congress and other large libraries in this country, they are not in America; and according to the director of the British Union-Catalog of Periodicals, they are not in England either.20 But if these October-December issues of the Traveller ever turn up, we might discover Shelley's mis-informed "Traveller from an antique land."21 The University of Alabama 17. Mary Shelley's Journal, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Norman, Oklahoma, 1947), pp. 79, 81, 83, 91, 220o. 18. Professor Frederick A. Pottle has kindly pointed out to me that the sunken head ("T&te colossale enfouie") noted in Plate III "may have seemed to Shelley more memorable and satisfactory than the faceless above-ground head of the actual statue." 19. See Mary Shelley's Journal, pp. 85-86, and DNB. Both Jones and Newman Ivey White (Shelley, I, 501) report Coulson as editor of the Globe. Actually the Traveller (issued 1802-1828) was incorporated into the Globe in 1823. Maria Gisborne correctly re-

fers to him in 1822 as "Mr. Coulson, editor of the Traveller." See Maria Gisborne dr Edward E. Williams, Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Norman, Oklahoma, 1951), p. 83. See also William S. Ward, Index and 20. Finding List of Serials Published in the British Isles, 1789-1832 (Lexington, Kentucky, 1953). Grateful acknowledgment is made to 21. the University of Alabama Research Committee for the purchase of microfilms and photostats used in the preparation of this paper.