All foreign lands rested content, and their people were happy.

From Ancient Worlds by Richard Miles

Civilization cannot be separated from the locus that created it, the city. More than 4,000 years ago, a nameless poet listed the attributes of a successful city – the place where all the aspirations of a civilization find concrete expression. The list appears in ‘The Curse of Akkad’, an ancient Babylonian poem, and it tells the fate of one of the earliest empires in Mesopotamia, in southern Iraq. Its details are so vivid that they could have been written yesterday:

The warehouses were well provisioned, dwellings in the city were well built.

Its people would eat magnificent food, its people would drink wonderful drinks.

Those who bathed for holidays rejoiced in the courtyards.

The people would crowd the places of celebration, acquaintances would dine together …

Foreigners would flock to and fro like exotic birds in the sky,

old women with good advice, and old men with good counsel,

young women with dancing spirit, young men with fighting spirit …

All foreign lands rested content, and their people were happy.

The reality, of course, is that not everybody can be happy: every city, every civilization has its winners and losers, its haves and have-nots. This is the heavy but necessary price of civilization. But the prize was, and remains, a great one: the happy scenes expressed in this ancient poem make as much sense to us now as they did 4,000 years ago.

On my journey to the sites of these ancient civilizations, I have visited some of the world’s most dangerous and troubled regions. Standing on a hotel rooftop in Baghdad, watching the sky buzz with military helicopters, you cannot help but be struck by the fragility of human civilization. That same ancient poet who described a city in its full glory also drew a sinister portrait of what happened when it all goes wrong:

Packs of dogs roamed the silent streets.

If two men walked there they would be eaten by them, and if three men walked there they would be eaten by them.

Noses were punched, heads were smashed …

Honest people were confused for traitors, heroes lay dead on top of heroes

the blood of traitors ran upon the blood of honest men …

The old women did not restrain the cry, ‘Alas for my city!’

The old men did not restrain the cry, ‘Alas for its people!’

Its young women did not restrain from tearing their hair.

Its young men did not restrain from sharpening their knives.