Who was the first person in recorded history?
A bit related: Enheduanna is likely the first named author in history, she is an author of hymns to goddess Inanna, composed ~2200BC. From wikipedia: The hymns she wrote to Inanna celebrate her individual relationship with Inanna, thereby setting down the earliest surviving verbal account of an individual’s consciousness of her inner life. From wikipedia on Sargon: Sargon is regarded as one of the first individuals in recorded history to create a multiethnic, centrally ruled empire, and his dynasty controlled Mesopotamia for around a century and a half. So, I bet he’s not the first individual because Egyptian earliest dynasties start at around ~3000BC. First Pharaoh Narmer might be the first recorded person.
Anything your high school history teacher said on this subject is almost certainly no longer true. Outside of Egypt (meaningful translation of Hieroglyphs starts in the mid 1800s), history prior to the late iron age is a very recent field of study. Nearly all of it relying on languages first translated in the mid 1900s and not really understood until well into the later half of the 20th century. It is a living, rapidly changing field. Most of the known ancient writings (clay tables especially) have not yet been translated and studied and only a tiny fraction of known sites have been excavated.
The very first ruler of whom we have positive evidence is Enmebaragesi, king of Kish (circa 2700 b.c.). In the King List, an ancient record of the rulers of Sumer, he is noted as having ‘carried away as spoil the weapons of Elam.’ Around the time of Enmebaragesi’s campaign against Elam came the earliest account of a long-distance campaign. King Gilgamesh of Uruk needed cedar for construction of a temple, and set off for the mountains: ‘I will cut down the cedar. An everlasting name I will establish for myself! Orders…to the armorers will I give….’ And Sargon of Akkad (2371-2316 b.c.) provided history with the name of its first career conqueror. — historynet The confirmed existence of Enmebaragesi leads to the inference that Gilgamesh was also historical, but similar proof does not
