Djoser
Another vote for So Crates.
Make that 8 (?) for Tut.
Buried in his jammies …
Mostly ancient Greek philosophers. Plato if you believe in him/Socrates/Epicurus/Aristotle.
Interesting way of looking at it. And your choice of Tutankhamun makes me think a bit, so please bear with me while I wax philosophical. We have Tut’s body, and his stuff. We don’t have the bodies of Alexander or Caesar (well, Alexander is somewhere beneath the streets of Alexandria, so maybe some day we’ll get lucky). Even so, if I were to claim that Caesar never existed, I’d probably have to come up with a crazier conspiracy theory than if I were to suggest the same for Tut.
We have the body of Ötzi. So, he most definitely existed. Except that his name wasn’t actually Ötzi, and we obviously know next to nothing about who he was. It would seem weird to say that we have more evidence for his existence than for Caesar’s. What would that even mean, exactly? It doesn’t even seem to compute.
I will say that I’m drawn to artifacts that have some direct link with famous historical figures. Anything that makes them feel more real. Weird fact: We may have Cleopatra’s handwriting. That is, one word of it, in Greek: γινέσθοι.
It’s not impossible that a scribe wrote it, but it may well have been Cleopatra herself. For some reason, that gives me a tingly feeling.
Cyrus the Great
Parshvanatha
Otzi the Iceman
Wow, a lot more varied than I thought. Guess I play too much New Vegas. I go to the Greeks after JC, interesting to see the religious figures popping up, they’d be quite far down the list for me.
Confucius.
Socrates.
Third vote for Hammurabi from me. Odd, perhaps, since the Greek mathematicians fascinate me more.
King Herod
Is Jesus a valid choice? Isn’t BCE is based on when he died?
Jesus’s Mom.
Born. Well… roughly.
Julius Caesar.
Jinmu Tenno (神武天皇). Assuming he isn’t just legendary, but 127 million Japanese can’t be wrong.
Well, ok, technically they could be.
Julius Caesar.
I must agree I first thought of Gaius Julius Caesar.
Vercingetorix
Socrates, but then I’ve always been a gadfly