^^ According to the travel books like Lonely Planet [1], these feet are probably the ones that inspired the Ozymandias poem. The torso and head are toppled nearby.
This is in the Ramesseum in the west bank of Luxor. I visited a few years ago. Highly recommended, Egypt is a wonderful country. In the Cairo museum, you can also look into the eyes of the mummy of Rameses II himself and give him the finger on behalf of Moses, and Percy Shelley.
While it is true that Shelley was motivated to write the poem by the imminent arrival in London of the Younger Memnon statue, the scene that the poem describes is not consistent with that particular statue (which consists of an upper torso) rather than a separate head and trunkless legs located in its original desert setting.
"think it depicts Ramses II, Ozyamandias, the Great Ancestor—one of Egypt’s most famous and celebrated pharaohs."
I was wondering if the Shelley Poem about Ozymandias was about this guy [1]. Except the sonnet talks about finding the civilization remains in the desert vs under a road.
...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
I went to Egypt in 2015 its sad that the country is suffering due to instability region. Was sad because for a large part of the country(especially south of Cairo) the soul source of income was tourism which was dwindling.
I also learnt that when the Temple of Luxor was excavated a lot of people were upset because they were evicted from where they lived. Such discoveries can upset people's livelihood. So, I sort of hope they don't find a temple there...:)
It makes you wonder what else is buried beneath the streets of cities built on top of ancient ruins. Cairo, Alexandria, Rome, Mexico City, Athens. Cool stuff, if you ask me.
If you ask contemporary Romans, for a lot of people it's just a huge hassle. It slows down economic activity of all sorts - every time you dig, stuff comes up, work is stopped, and lengthy procedures are started to assess what's there etc etc... This, of course, if you are honest and have time to spare. Less scrupulous individuals will simply loot what they can and keep digging, or even smash everything to bits before anyone can notice.
Rome has one of the most underdeveloped subways among major capitals, simply because digging anything is very difficult: as the article mentions, soil is quite peculiar over there, and technically it's a city built over several hills. Add the archeological element, and you might as well give up.
> Less scrupulous individuals will simply loot what they can and keep digging, or even smash everything to bits before anyone can notice.
Crikey, I have heard countless stories from farmers, old construction workers and so on of coming across burial sites, ancient tools or dinosaur bones, where they have just covered the stuff up, buried it further down another hole or even destroyed it just because they had no care or knowledge of that stuff.
Some of the stories are pretty interesting (like caves with paintings of mega-fauna or sites of ancient fish farming), but some are also horrifying (One old bloke found a giant bone on his property while clearing scrub, he burnt it).
My home town was an important Etruscan city, and still has a huge necropolis.
One of my grand-uncles told me that when he was a kid (early 20th century) when they found ancient vases they used them for sling practice, it was only later that people realized they had any value.
In most of those places you can't put a spade in the ground without hitting some artifact. Archaeologists have to be on call during construction projects.
This is way cool, and will undoubtedly make for a great exhibit. But an important find? Unlikely. We know a _lot_ about Rameses 2, we've even got a fair few giant statues of him (even bigger than this one).
I think its in their interest to hype up every discovery to boost tourism which has taken a hit past couple of years. You are right, I've read around 5 articles about this today but not a single one mentins what makes this find particularly remarkable.
In pop culture, you might recall that Ozymandias was the name of the S05 finale of Breaking Bad (spoiler ahead).
It too, shows the decline of Walter's empire, and in the final scenes, he falls down on his side in the desert in a scene like the one in the poem ("The lone and level sands stretch far away").
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.