Hearing Power: Sound and Authority in the Ancient World

This essay explores how sound functioned as a technology of authority across ancient empires, arguing that power in the ancient world was not only seen but heard. Beginning with a close observation of a musician depicted on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, it traces how horns, trumpets, and ritual sound operated within distinct cultural “acoustic regimes,” each reflecting a different conception of political and religious authority. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, sound framed ritual order and divine sanction, transforming moments rather than issuing commands. In the Neo-Hittite and Levantine worlds, horns marked liminality or summoned communal obligation, binding people to covenant or dynastic legitimacy rather than enforcing obedience. Greek practices shifted sound toward civic coordination, regulating collective movement among citizen-soldiers without centralized command, before Macedonian military reforms transformed acoustic signals into instruments of hierarchical control. The essay culminates with Rome, where sound was fully abstracted from ritual and converted into a standardized system of command-and-control through instruments such as the cornu, embedded within military bureaucracy. By comparing these traditions, the essay argues that the evolution of sound from ritual marker to executable command mirrors broader political transitions from sacral kingship and civic participation to imperial administration. Ancient empires, it concludes, were constructed not only through monuments and texts, but through carefully structured soundscapes that made authority audible, actionable, and enduring.