The Traveling Sound Museum is a collection of Sound Jars that each contain a different sound from a different place from a different TIME in the history of the world, going back over a thousand years. But how did we come to posses such a thing? And where did it come from?
The Baghdad Battery, capable of 0.5V
We believe that the earliest sound jars in existence were built in the city of Bosra in the early 7th century CE. The exact mechanism used to capture the sounds is still unknown, but we do know the devices were powered by what is known today as the “Baghdad Battery“. The Baghdad Battery was discovered in 1940 by Wilhelm Konig, then the director of the National Museum of Iraq. Konig found a collection of 5″ terracota jars in the basement of the museum, each dating back to the Sassanid Empire (300-600CE) and each containing a copper sheet rolled into a tube and a small iron rod. Traces of lemon juice were found in each of the jars, and it has since been proven that these jars were in fact making use of the electrochemical properties of these two metals which, when combined with an acidic agent, generate almost .5 volts of electricity. The existence of such a thing made possible the early Sound Jars of Bosra and subsequently the entire future collection of the museum.
The Age of the Caliphates
In 634 the Rashidun Caliphate marched on the Sassanid Empire in the Battle of Bosra. It was a hot, summer attack and a decisive victory for the Caliphate. Amongst the booty collected and marched out of town was a trunk containing the original collection of Sound Jars. As a result the jars survived and prospered under Islamic protection throughout the rule of the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid Caliphates straight through until the middle of the 13th century.
But in 1258 the Mongols, under the direction of Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu Khan, laid siege to Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Mongols became fascinated with these objects as a way for their largely oral and illiterate society to preserve the sounds of the places they were in the process of conquering. As such, they spread the sound jars far and wide and created much of what is considered the Early or Pre-Renaissance collection. With the decline of Mongol power in the 14th century, the sound jars disappeared from history for almost five hundred years.
Hulagu Khan in the Battle of Baghdad - 1258
Based on the sounds that exist in the collection today, it is clear that the jars made their way into European hands during the failed Franco-Mongolian Alliance of the 14th century and subsequently to the new world during the Age of Discovery. They are briefly mentioned in a 16th century Irish manuscript, and then vanish again until the late 19th century where the collection appears in the possession of a traveling salesman by the name of Joseph Tarbell. Joseph worked the trade route between Missouri and West Virginia and wasted little time putting the astonishing collection to work. He would charge a penny per person for the opportunity to approach his wagon and listen to the sounds within the jars. When Joseph dies, the Traveling Sound Museum goes missing and might have been lost forever were it not for its sudden reappearance late last year in upstate New York. It is now considered one of the most astonishing and revelatory collections of artifacts the world has ever known.
