Mine, too, with the proviso that I don’t know how many people know the name at all, much less associate it with a person.
Wait, WHAT?
off to Wikipedia
There might still be a few people left in the world who have never heard of Jesus, but if there are, then those people have likewise never heard of anyone else from outside of their very small and insular region. So for any value of “known to practically everyone” that allows for any answer at all, we can put a hard ending limit of ~0 CE.
I think it’s probably safe to say that Confucius is also known to “practically everyone”, because even in the West, it’s memetic that “Confucius say…” some nugget of wisdom (or “wisdom”).
Pythagoras might be a contender. I’m sure that, in any place with formal education, schoolchildren learn his eponymous theorem, but I don’t know whether it’s referred to as the “Pythagorean Theorem” in various Asian countries.
I suppose that depends upon how you interpret the OP. While technically historical, in that written records are present, I tend not to consider people who are still living as historical figures.
“The Scorpion King (Hollywood)” is well known to people who watch Hollywood movies. But my understanding is that it’s a hypothetical name for the predecessor of the documented person Narmer. We know that there were predecessors: we have a hypothesis that one or more of them might have been indicated by a scorpion symbol.
I think we have to presuppose some knowledge of ancient and world history.
Then I would be tempted to say Menes/Narmer, the first Pharaoh of united Egypt, though I’m not sure that historians agree he was a single person, or if so, which one he was.
The first non-royal person I can think of is Imhotep, vizier and architect to Djoser, the early Pharaoh who built the first pyramid, living in the late 2700s BCE.
I was doing some research myself.
Right now I guess I would vote for Cheops - 27th century BC.
Even knowing who Imhotep was historically, in my imagination he still looks like Arnold Vosloo.
I’d also guess Cheops. But if he’s not known enough, Buddha and Confucius are strong contenders.
Raises hand Menes/Narmer? Sorry, don’t know the name. Imothotep, heard the name, but not sure what he’s famous for. Cheops, as in Great Pyramid of…
What makes you think Muslims wouldn’t haveheard of Jesus? He’s their number 2 prophet, and the most mentioned person in the Quran.
Ahhh…thank you for that! I completely forgot they acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, but the the Messiah!
Regarding a person who, in his own time, was known to practically everyone, it’s certainly a modern figure.
From sports, I’d suggest Muhammed Ali or Pele.
From politics, regrettably, I’d go with Hitler.
The character in the movie and the Egyptian king may have shared the word “Scorpion” in their appellation but the movie character wasn’t “based” on the real person, largely because nothing is known about the character of that person.
If not Confucius then probably Elvis.
I hadn’t heard of them until this thread. I did know about the High Kingdom and the Low Kingdom, and the unification, but I hadn’t heard a specific ruler’s name linked to “that far back”.
And while I know the name Keops, the knowledge that it refers to a person and not a place is pretty much buried in the depths of my mind. I’ve known people whose reaction to hearing that someone else had visited “the Great Pyramid of Keops” was a confused “oh, I thought you’d gone to Egypt?”; they knew the name “Great Pyramid” but had lost the tail. So while it’s a widely(sh) known name, the question to me would be how many people realize it’s a person’s name.
Who is The Rock based off of?
I’ve never heard of the Scorpion King, and suspect that other people who have seen some movie I’ve never heard of, not a lot of other people have heard of him, either.
Adam?