Ramesses II is often counted among Ancient Egypt’s greatest pharaohs. He certainly saw himself that way: he spent most of his reign covering his kingdom in dedicated to himself. The third ruler of the 19th Dynasty had an unusually long kingship, fathered hundreds of children and – if you believe his own press – was a mighty warrior who could hold his ground against an entire army “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,” wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in his 1818 poem Ozymandias, adopting the name the Ancient Greeks used for Ramesses II. “Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!”
Ramesses II appears as a boy on reliefs at Seti I’s tomb in Abydos
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Tough Shelley’s poem is written as a cautionary tale – his Ozymandias’s mighty empire is long gone, and where it once was, “the lone and level sands stretch far away” – the memory of the real Ozymandias lives on. Ramesses II, son of Pharaoh Seti I and grandson of 19th Dynasty founder Ramesses I, was the mastermind of such an extensive programme of building across Egypt that his presence is difficult to escape even now – from Abu Simbel to Karnak, you can still see colossal statues bearing his likeness.