People
Historical Figures and Influential People in History
Explore rulers, generals, thinkers, scientists and reformers who shaped world history. Search for a specific person, or browse by era, region, country and A–Z.
Ancient Civilisations Historical Figures
Use the filters on the right to narrow the figure index while keeping the main results in view.
9 results
Confucius
-551–-479East AsiaChina
He spent most of his life as a failed official, wandering from court to court offering advice nobody took — and his ideas shaped East Asian civilisation for millennia.
Open profile →
Gilgamesh
-2800–-2500OtherIraq
He was a king who set out to find the secret of eternal life, failed, and returned home — and the story became the oldest written epic humanity has ever found.
Open profile →
Hammurabi
-1810–-1750OtherIraq
He had his laws carved into a stone column and placed where everyone could see them — one of the first times a ruler publicly promised to be bound by the same rules as the ruled.
Open profile →
Khufu
-2600–-2566Middle EastEgypt
He ordered the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza — one of the most ambitious building projects in human history — and almost nothing else about him is known with any certainty.
Open profile →
Narmer
-3150–-3100Middle EastEgypt
He may have unified Egypt at the dawn of recorded history — or the famous palette that shows him doing so may be ceremonial art — and we still can't quite be sure which.
Open profile →
Sargon of Akkad
-2334–-2279OtherIraq
He rose from obscurity — possibly a gardener's son — to build the first true empire in recorded history, and the stories told about him echo through legends for millennia.
Open profile →
Saul
-1050–-1010Middle EastIsrael
He was everything the Israelites asked for in a king — tall, strong, from the right tribe — and fell apart under the pressure of a role he couldn't quite figure out how to play.
Open profile →
Solomon
-990–-931Middle EastIsrael
He was famed for wisdom, built the Temple, accumulated vast wealth — and left a kingdom so strained by the cost of his ambitions that it split apart after his death.
Open profile →
Tarquin the Proud
-550–-495EuropeItaly
He was Rome's last king — deposed in a revolt so definitive that the Romans refused to use the word 'king' for the next five hundred years.
Open profile →