just now realizing that while "Ozymandias" is conventionally read as a parable about the fleeting nature of power, it works just as well as a manifestation of the orientalist need for the middle east to be a history-less tabula rasa ready to be overwritten by western colonialist expansion. i would say "in this essay," but i looked it up and of course there is already a bunch of scholarship about this!
i can easily picture the traveller from an antique land wistfully muttering "nothing beside remains..." while his guide is like "we are literally 100 yards away from the village where you hired me"
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