At the dawning of the British Empire in 1818, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned a memorable sonnet freighted with foreboding about the inevitable decline of all empires, whether in ancient Egypt or then-modern Britain. In Shelly’s stanzas, a traveler in Egypt comes across the ruins of a once-monumental statue, with “a shattered visage lying half sunk” in desert sands bearing the “sneer of cold command.” Only its “trunkless legs of stone” remain standing. Yet the inscription carved on those stones still proclaims: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” And in a … Continue reading →

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