← Back to the front page

Here are Some of the Most Adventurous People that Ever Existed

Khalid Elhassan April 24, 2021 36 min

27. The Guy Behind Alexander the Great’s Corpse Adventure Led an Adventurous Life Himself

The guy who stole Alexander the Great’s corpse, Ptolemy I Soter, Greek for “Ptolemy the Savior” (367 – 282 BC), led an adventurous life in his own right. Ptolemy was a Macedonian general and a close companion of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s death, Ptolemy was one of the three Diadochi, or successors, who carved up Alexander’s empire. He took Egypt as his share. Ptolemy founded the Ptolemaic Dynasty, which ruled Egypt for three centuries until Cleopatra’s suicide and Rome’s annexation of Egypt in 30 BC.

Ptolemy was born out of wedlock to a concubine presented by a nobleman to King Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father. Ptolemy’s father is unknown, and some ancient sources claim that his mother was already pregnant when she was gifted to Phillip II. Others assert that it was Phillip who impregnated her – which would make Ptolemy Alexander’s half-brother. Whatever his parentage, Ptolemy was born in Phillip’s household, and was educated as a royal page in the Macedonian court. That gave him a huge leg up in life.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.