Scientist of the Day - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Younger Memnon, a colossal syenite bust of Ramesses II, obtained for the British Museum in 1816 by Heny Salt but not put in place until 1821, modem photograph, British Museum, London, item EA 19 (Wikimedia commons)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, an English poet, was born Aug. 4, 1792. Shelley had a great interest in science, experimenting with electricity and explosives (he liked to blow things up during his school days at Eton and Oxford), but our subject today is Shelley's interest in antiquities, as manifested in one of his most famous poems, “Ozymandias” (Ozymandias was the Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II). The poem, a sonnet, was published in a periodical in 1818, and then in a collection of his poems in 1819.

Since sonnets by rule can have only 14 lines of verse, we can include the entire poem here:

Ozymandias
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.

Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley, stipple and line engraving, by William Finden, after Amelia Curran, 1819, National Portrait Gallery, London (npg.org.uk/collections)

Considerable scholarly ink has been devoted to the question of when and how Shelley saw or got the idea of a fallen Egyptian colossus. Most articles on the poem (such as that on Wikipedia) illustrate their accounts with a photo of a monumental syenite head of Ramesses II, called the Younger Memnon, which is on display in the British Museum (first image). The Museum did indeed acquire the head in 1816, from the British consul in Egypt, Henry Salt, who in turn had employed Giovanni Belzoni to fetch it from the plain of Thebes and ferry it to Cairo (see our post on Belzoni). But everyone knows the head did not arrive in London and go on display until 1821, so there is no way Shelley was inspired by seeing the head of the Younger Memnon. So where did he get the idea for a mediation on Egyptian ruins and the hubris of monument builders?

View of fallen colossus of “Ozymandias” at the Memnonium at Thebes, after drawing by André Dutertre, Description de l’Égypte, Antiquités, vol. 2, plate 25, 1812 (Linda Hall Library)

I have a few thoughts on this, although I am a historian of science and totally untrained in Shelley studies. But I do know that the fallen colossus of Ramesses II was discovered by Napoleon's savants around 1799 and that they published a variety of engravings of the Ramesseum (which the French called the Memnonium) in the plate volumes of the Description de l’Égypte (1809-28). We mounted an entire exhibition on the Description back in 2006.

Colossal head of Ozymandias (Ramesses II) found at the Memnonium at Thebes, engraving after drawing by André Dutertre, Description de l’Égypte, Antiquités, vol. 2, plate 32, 1812 (Linda Hall Library)

We show here the engraving of the fallen colossus at the Memnonium (which the caption identifies as Ozymandias; third image), as well as an engraving of the very head that Belloni would later bring back (fourth image); both appeared in volume 2 of the Antiquities, published in 1812.

Remains of a standing colossus at Karnak, after drawing by André Dutertre, Description de l’Égypte, Antiquités, vol. 3, plate 20, 1812 (Linda Hall Library)

But the piece de resistance of my argument is an engraving in Antiquities plate volume 3 (1812), which shows the standing remains of a colossus at Karnak, on the other side of the Nile from the Memnonium. If that image doesn't conjure up "two vast and trunkless legs of stone," I don't know what might. This volume and volume 2 were published in plenty of time for Shelley or one of his circle to see it, and I can well imagine the English artist Shelley gazing at the engraving of the French artist Andre Dutertre contemplating the ruined sanding colossus and thinking, this might be worth a meditation in verse.

A notebook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, opened to a drawing (left) and a manuscript draft of “Ozymandias” (right), 1817 (visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/cut)

Shelley’s manuscript draft of “Ozymandias,” 1817, Bodleian Library (Wikimedia commons)

If you like your rarities to be unique, hie thee to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which has among its treasures something they call Shelley's Notebook, which contains a manuscript version of “Ozymandias” in Shelley's own hand, opposite an elaborate doodle, also in Shelley's hand. We show both the two-page opening, in which the poem, on the right, is lying on its side (sixth image), and then just the poem, rotated 90 degrees, so you can read it (seventh image). How cool is that! The notebook was recently on display, opened to these two pages, as part of an exhibition called “Write Cut Rewrite,” which also included a draft of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. If you click on the image of just the manuscript poem (seventh image), you will be taken to a Wikimedia commons page that has a high-resolution image. If you enlarge it, you can see the phase “trunkless legs” in several places among the scibbles, as well as, out on the left, the phase “shattered visage.”

I find it interesting that Oxford has Shelley’s Notebook, since they booted him out in 1811 under suspicion of atheistical activities.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.