I can’t think of anyone in the bible or Ancient Rome and Greece liturature. I’m not that well read.
The earliest fat person written about, fiction or real, that I can recall is the fictional Falstaff character of "
King Lear" written during the Elizibethan era.
I’m sure you can do better than that.
I was pondering the idea, given I haven’t read of any ancient fat people, that either being fat was not a social impediment that would be noteworthy in earlier times, or that people may not have been getting fat at all !
I think they’re too accurate for it to be unheard of to see fat people then. I guess this risks argument over what ‘fat’ is, but I suspect at least some of those builds meet the criteria.
I would imagine even in HG societies select individuals could get fat. It’s impossible to know how all the human tribes/loose-knit social groups organized themselves, but if some of them had shaman or such that were afforded opportunities to eat but were not required to help in hunting or gathering I could see them getting fat.
The fertility statues may have more to do with pregnancy, though, which would cause a noticeable bulge that perhaps was exaggerated in the sculpture.
This is a total nitpick, but Falstaff wasn’t in King Lear (at least not that I remember - it’s been a while). He was in Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. He was pretty fat though.
Assuming they’ve got the identification right, we’ve got Hatshepsut’s remains that indicate she was obese over 3000 years ago. Also, the (later in history) Ptolemaic pharaohs were notoriously overweight.
There’s also some doubt now as to whether they were fertility symbols. Some scholars think they’re the paleolithic equivalent of a photo of your girlfriend, with the sexiest parts emphasized.
I wonder if anyone has checked the fossil record for obesity-related stresses on hominid bones. I don’t even know if a study like that would be possible, but it would be pretty interesting if we found evidence of a really fat non-sapiens hominid individual.
William the Conqueror became obese later in life, which might have contributed to his death (horse accident, blunt force trauma to the gut), and made for a memorable funeral, if true.
If you have a Bible, look to the Book of Judges, chapter 3.
“Ehud presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab, who was a very fat man.”
A few verses later, Ehud stabs Eglon in the stomach with a sword… and according to the story the king’s belly fat enveloped the sword!
(Oops… ultrafilter beat me!)
I’ve heard of a notoriously fat Roman who could only walk with the aid of two slaves to hold up his belly. Tbh though the image this calls to mind is of someone with a humungous tumour.