Found: A Colossal Statue of Ramses II Hiding Under a Cairo Street
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
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.
https://images.rapgenius.com/64983b09fb243b2e65d57134773315d...
Wikipedia has a different story, where he was inspired by the news of the imminent arrival of this (without seeing it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#/media/File:Statue_...
https://english-303-final.wikispaces.com/Historical+Content+...
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.
^^ 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.
[1] https://www.lonelyplanet.com/egypt/luxor/attractions/ramesse...
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
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 had to memorize that poem in grade school. Now I know it wasn't just a fictional character. I always liked that one.
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...:)
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.
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).
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.
Early cathedrals in Ireland incorporate pieces of pagan buildings: https://goo.gl/images/a5cduy
The contrast against much of the writing found online in the past few years is striking—and refreshing.
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").