Huw TD

It is hidden from the eyes of all the living,
And concealed from the birds of the air;
Abaddon and Death say,
"We have heard a rumour of it with our ears"...

New on History for Atheists: my long awaited and rather long critical review of Alice Roberts' new book *Domination*:
historyforatheists.com/2025/10/revi...

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the desert knows:- "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows "The wonders of my hand." - The City's gone, - Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose The site of this forgotten Babylon. We wonder, - and some Hunter may express Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess What powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Shelley's Ozymandias was written in competition with Horace Smith, who also composed a poem on the same subject. It's... well, it's a bit crap. You can see why Shelley won:

Well, this isn't the usual run of prie- oh, it's a sex thing.

"Dear Sir, Your good name has been bought to my attention as a trustworthy man and a believer in God. I am the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. My mother left me forty-five million pounds and the city of York but I am unable ..."

This is just to say

I have looked on
the works
that were in
the desert

and which
you were probably
thinking
would still stand

Forgive me
they were trunkless
so vast
and so old

The wreck
We looked upon his works
Yes
YES
The despair is out

It's been
One week since I met a guy
from a distant land he traveled, where this hit his eye:
Two vast trunkless legs of stone
Pair of 'em in the desart, standing all alone.
One visage half sunk in sand
With a wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Yesterday he was king of kings...

I heard there was a statue tall
That sneered at folk and commanded all
But you don't really care for symbols do ya
It goes like this the feet the fist
The head that fell the aim that missed
The long lost king whose name was Ozymandias
Ozymandias
Ozymandias
Ozymandias
Ozymaaaaandias

Once upon a desert sandy
As through winds the trav'ling man he
Spied the face of Ozymandy
Lying, simply lying there
Suddenly there was some writing
Pon the plinth that he was sighting
That the sand and time were blighting
Quoth the statue, "Now despair"

There was an old man you could gaze
At his works in despair in a daze
If you looked upon them
And were mere mortal men
'Ozymandias mighty', it says

Then he said to me, "Why did you come here? Has anything happened in the Residence?" Then I said to him, "It's that the Dual King Sehotepibre has gone to the horizon, and how this all happened is unknown." But I spoke in half-truths.

Curious to see what my second years make of Sinuhe this afternoon: a complicated and less-than-entirely-honest narrator and protagonist.

Well that's easy enough to identify: which MP has just given a big speech on family values?

If you'd gone with Ra, you could still be reciting names now...

How do you manage to get caught out on this, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the Deputy PM was forced out over a property-related legal issue earlier in the year?! How do you not check? How do you not have people around you who tell you to check in quite forceful terms?

i'll have you know good sir that i am 13/458ths croatian and once drank a staropramen so i have an unbreakable psychic link with the motherland

Da iawn!

british archaeologists, people who will happily discuss changes in soil colouration and get excited by postholes: famously keen on throwing away finds

and for extra fun, pronouncing that the dutch way doubles as a good impression of the dial-up tone

In any case, every time an institution has just caved in over the past year in the US, or the government here has decided to pander to a minority of lunatics on twitter, the quote has come to mind.

For the last year or so I've been having this nagging memory of a line (it turns out from Plutarch's Lycurgus [XIX.3]) that Sparta was better defended by a wall of men; perhaps also applicable in the sense that institutions matter less in themselves than the people who run them.

I have gone in as a falcon, I have come out as a phoenix, the god who worships Re. (BDF)

huh, where did you get that simcity 3000 graphics mod

Before I left the other place, there were absolutely deranged takes going around. "£120,000 is actually low-paid" levels of deranged.

I mean, 80k is well above the start of the pay-scale for a (full) professor at my uni, and we're one of the better paying ones.

"We don't know anything about archaeology or AI, but shut up and listen while we patronise you about your job."

The voters have lost the confidence of the party, and can only win it back by redoubled work quotas...

Suspect Musk hasn't got the attention span for the episode about calling Magnum Concilium at York, though.

Part of this is also that, for many Americans, the rest of the world is basically entertainment. There's an element of wanting something exciting on the TV about this, too.

Specifically in a way that hurts people they see as The Other, because I guarantee you anyone saying it would be shitting themselves with fear the moment the state monopoly on violence distintigrated.