Imagine this scenario: three English men sitting around a table at a drunken party. The men bet each other that each of them could come up with the best poem in the alotted time of fifteen minutes. The poem's topic was Egypt. The poem Ozymandias was the response of Percy Bysshe Shelley to the bet. The first vital point to note is that the poem is an Italian sonnet in a traditional 14 line, 8-6, set-up …showed first 75 words of 302 total…

…showed last 75 words of 302 total…no longer exists. Ozy comes from the Greek "ozium," which means to breath, or air. Mandias comes from the Greek "mandate," which means to rule. Hence, Ozymandias is simply a "ruler of air" or a "ruler of nothing". It is then obvious that the King of Kings spoken of in the poem is actually nature itself. Nature never disappears and nature represents the immortality not represented by the Ramses or any other individual or possession.