Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tudorburg forest?

What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland?

Or what made Alexander truly great?

With a subscription to history hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists.

You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II.

Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. I met a traveller from an antique land who said,

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone, sand 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 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 Ozymandius, king of kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty and despair.

No thing beside remains, round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

That was the poem Ozymandius, published by the English poet Percy Shelley in 1818.

It was inspired by the impending arrival in London of a colossal ancient

Egyptian statue, the head of a pharaoh who had lived 3,000 years earlier, and whose fascinating

story was only then just being rediscovered. The Greeks called this figure Ozymandius,

but we know him today by his actual name,

Ramesses. Pharaoh Ramesses the Second, Ramesses the Great. In last week's episode, we explored how Ramesses' dynasty, the Ramesids, came to rule Egypt after a period of turmoil and decline.

How first Ramesses's granddad, and then his father, Setti the first, set about consolidating

their power, paving the way for young Ramesses to inherit an Egypt ready to show its might

...