Ozymandias, Belzoni, and the Road Through Luxor

I wasn’t sitting at a desk when Ozymandias came back to me.
I wasn’t in a library or a classroom.

I was in a car—being expertly driven through Luxor by my wonderful driver, Nubi.

We passed sugarcane fields, small houses, kids on bicycles, donkeys pulling carts. Nubi navigated the road with the calm confidence of someone who truly knows a place—not just its streets, but its rhythm. Somewhere between a bend in the road and the steady hum of the engine, my mind leapt two centuries backward.

I thought of Giovanni Belzoni, rattling along these same paths, full of ambition and certainty, convinced history itself was waiting for him to claim it.

Then I thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

And I thought of Ozymandias.

The Poem That Never Leaves Egypt

Shelley never set foot in Egypt, yet his poem may be the most enduring meditation on Egyptian power ever written. Ozymandias—inspired by reports of a colossal statue of Ramesses II—doesn’t celebrate empire. It dismantles it.

“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

The irony is merciless. The works are gone. The desert remains.

As Nubi drove on, pointing out fragments of everyday life along the way, it struck me how different lived Egypt feels from imagined Egypt. Shelley grasped something essential from afar: Egypt does not flatter arrogance. It outlasts it.

Belzoni on the Road

Belzoni was not a poet.
He was a force of nature.

A former strongman, engineer, and showman, he arrived in Egypt with muscle, ego, and a willingness to move mountains—sometimes literally. He dragged colossal statues, blasted temples, and shipped monuments westward. To Britain, he was a hero. To Egypt, history is more complicated.

As Nubi guided us smoothly past villages and palm groves, I imagined Belzoni jolting along in a crude carriage, convinced he was rescuing greatness from oblivion. Did he ever look around and see the living country moving past him? Or did the thrill of conquest drown that out?

The Desert Always Wins

Shelley’s poem doesn’t argue.
It waits.

The broken statue isn’t undone by criticism—it’s undone by time. A once-divine ruler reduced to fragments, surrounded by endless sand. Power is temporary. Stone is patient. Egypt endures.

Belzoni believed he was preserving immortality by removing it. Shelley believed immortality itself was a dangerous illusion.

Somewhere between those two ideas—while riding comfortably through Luxor with a driver who knows every curve of the road—the truth settled in.

Why Egypt Still Humbles Us

Modern travelers arrive with cameras instead of chisels, but the lesson hasn’t changed.

Egypt does not belong to conquerors, collectors, or even historians. It belongs to time—and to the people who live within its flow every day, like Nubi, who carries centuries beneath his wheels without needing to name them.

Every empire that tried to possess Egypt has passed.
Every boast carved in stone has cracked.
Every promise of “forever” has proven fragile.

And yet Egypt remains—watching, patient, amused.

Still Wondering

As the road followed the Nile and the sun dipped lower, I understood why Ozymandias found me there. Egypt invites wonder, but it insists on humility. It asks one quiet question of everyone who passes through it, whether poet, explorer, or traveler in the back seat:

What do you think will last?

Belzoni answered with action.

Shelley answered with poetry.

Egypt answered with sand.

And thanks to a thoughtful drive through Luxor, I’m still wondering.

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