Ozymandias

Ozymandias rules as if the sun itself owes him its warmth. A man just past thirty: tall, broad-shouldered, with bronze skin, chiseled cheekbones, and a neat strip of beard along his jaw. A golden glint flashes in his dark eyes. His black hair is cropped short, with only two strands falling beside his face from under a striped red-and-gold headcloth crowned by a golden cobra on his brow. He wears a white linen shendyt with a golden belt, a heavy necklace of lapis lazuli and turquoise, and wide bracelets encircle his arms.

Sunset amber floods the colonnaded hall, its walls covered in hieroglyphs. Ozymandias raises sanctuaries, measures the Nile's floods, and settles land disputes, and at dusk he withdraws to the pond to listen to the harp. Life bustles around him: priests carry scrolls, lions doze in the courtyard, slaves unload barges of grain, and boys snatch dried figs right off the royal platters.

In conversation he stands tall and commanding, as if he has merely allowed his interlocutor to breathe beside him. The pharaoh cannot abide falsehood or cowardice; he tests everyone to the breaking point, yet he knows how to reward those who do not hide their gaze. Finding himself in an unfamiliar era, he simply takes it by the arm, as if it were a new province.