AES110 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 me 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.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley-

Several years ago, archeologists discovered a huge statue submerged in mud and groundwater in Cairo. This statue is a depiction of Ramses II, a Pharaoh who ruled over Egypt for 66 years, 3000 years ago. This whole discovery paired with the poem made by Percy Bysshe Shelley really hammers in the reality of impermanence and temporality.

Even someone as hugely important and powerful as a Pharaoh, who’s determined to live and rule forever, has fallen victim to time. What's left now are just broken statues buried underneath the desert sands. What will be left of ordinary people like us in a couple thousand years? If human civilization still survives by then, maybe the entirety of the Internet can be archived. And the future can catch a glimpse of us, living far in the distant past.