I love that MacGregor has an actor reading Shelley’s “Ozymandias” sonnet in this podcast. This statue is one of the best-known, most iconic, most impressive pieces in the museum; the first time I went there (in 2002) I snapped a photo of it from a slightly different angle (below). Apparently when it made its way back to England, around 1816, it was the first thing that made the British realize what ancient Egypt really was--the size, scope, scale, immensity of the statue. That poem was written at the time, as an ironic commentary on Napoleon, I’ve always heard, who failed to get this thing out of Egypt (his men may be responsible for the great big hole above the left breast). It was Belzoni, the Italian circus strong-man turned grave-robber in the service of the Brits, who arranged the reverse of what Rameses II was able to do, getting his men to put this enormous thing in place in a temple. Rameses did it because he was a PR whiz: make sure everybody knows your image, make sure that image represents you as strong and admirable, take credit for what you didn’t do, lie about your failures and claim they were victories…the whole kit and caboodle. And it worked, here we are 3000 years later still in awe of his statue. And still following the same basic principals of PR.
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