Why did Ozymandias have the inscription put on his statue?

Answer 1

The answer is in the next line. The inscription reads, "My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Yet in the next line we read that there is nothing to look at - everything that he boasted of is gone, and the "lone and level sands stretch far away." Earlier we even read that his own visage (his face, as in, that part of the statue) is lying shattered on the ground.

The poem is about temporal greatness. Many people, especially egotistical rulers, think that what they have achieved will last forever. It never does.

Answer 2

Percy Shelley's short poem Ozymandias, w as written as a Sonnet. Shelley and his friend, Horace Smith, both wrote sonnets about Ozymandias, in a friendly competition, for publication. Shelly's version was published in The Examiner, in London, in January of 1818, under the title,"Sonnet Osymandias ". Smith's version was too, published in The Examiner, the following month (February of 1818), under the title, Ozymandias.

Some historians believe Shelley likely wrote the sonnet in 1817, and the inspiration came from the historian Diodorus Siculus' first book (or book I), of his book series titled, Bibliotheca historica (Historical Library), a series of forty books, of universal history. Siculus, was a Greek historian, who lived during the first century, BC, and book I of the Bibliotheca historica, describes the history and culture of Egypt.

Other historians think Shelley's inspiration was provoked by the arrival of the enormous bust of Ramesses, a statue, which was displayed at the British Museum, in England in 1818.

The central theme of Osymandias, is the inevitable decline of all leaders, and of the empires they build, however mighty they build in their own time. Osymandias, was the Greek name Ramesses, Pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. Siculus records the inscription made on the pedestal of the bust of the statue (at the Ramesseum, on the other side of the Nile river from Luxor) as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias", in book I of the Bibliotheca historica.

Answer 3

I met a traveller from an antique land,

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."

Answer 4

because i said so and because he felt like! Take that and rewind it back!