The World

‘The real problem of humanity,’ said Edward O. Wilson, ‘is we have palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.’ Just because we are the smartest ape ever created, just because we have solved many problems so far, it does not mean we will solve everything. Human history is like one of those investment warning clauses: past performance is no guarantee of future results. Yet the harshness of humanity has been constantly rescued by our capacity to create and love: the family is the centre of both. Our limitless ability to destroy is matched only by our ingenious ability to recover.

In this book I have written of the fall of noble cities, the vanishing of kingdoms, the rise and fall of dynasties, cruelty upon cruelty, folly upon folly, eruptions, massacres, famines, pandemics and pollutions, yet again and again in these pages the high spirits and elevated thoughts, the capacity for joy and kindness, the variety and eccentricity of humanity, the faces of love and the devotion of family run through it all, and remind me why I started to write.

Celebrate your joy with us!

Join if in the whole wide world there’s

Just one soul to call your own! …

Be embracéd, all you millions,

Share this kiss with all the world!

Friedrich Schiller

, ‘Ode to Joy’

And you should have been cautious, better educated by the past,

The ancient bamboo books of history

Were there for you to study.

But you didn’t see …

Times change, power passes;

It is the pity of the world.

Li Qingzhao

Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.

Vasily Grossman

Rulers, statesmen and nations are often advised to learn the lesson of historical experience. But what experience and history teach is that nations and governments have never learned anything from history.

Hegel

I gazed in every direction and all appeared wonderfully beautiful. There were stars which we never see from earth … all larger than we have ever imagined. The starry spheres were much greater than the earth; indeed the earth seemed so small I was scornful of our empire … If only you look on high and contemplate this eternal home and resting place you will no longer bother with the gossip of the common herd or put your trust in human reward … for what men say dies with them and is blotted out with the forgetfulness of posterity.

Cicero

The wine is heady, make haste!

And time is scarce, take all of it you can.

Who knows if next year’s spring,

So sweet, will find you dust and ash or living man.

Saadi

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

Anne Frank

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is a work of synthesis based on the widest reading and travels over thirty years. In a bid to lighten an already large book, the Select Bibliography is available online at: www.simonsebagmontefiore.com

For the sake of length, I have chosen the key works on which each section is based. Again, for the sake of length, I have not listed every book read on each subject nor annotated every fact and quotation. There is some primary research in this book: in my own lifetime, I have been lucky to talk to some of the characters about their lives. In those cases, I quote them ‘as told to this author’ in the text.

Also by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Catherine the Great and Potemkin

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Young Stalin

Jerusalem: The Biography

The Romanovs: 1613–1918

Written in History: Letters that Changed the World

Voices of History: Speeches that Changed the World

Fiction

Sashenka

One Night in Winter

Red Sky at Noon

Children’s fiction (with Santa Montefiore)

The Royal Rabbits of London series

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson,

an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

Copyright © Simon Sebag Montefiore 2022

The moral right of Simon Sebag Montefiore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

ISBN (eBook) 978 0 2978 6969 6

www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Table of Contents

Dedication

Title Page

Contents

Epigraph

Preface and Acknowledgements

Note

Introduction

ACT ONE WORLD POPULATION:

Houses of Sargon and Ahmose: Ziggurats and Pyramids