The Fall of Númenor, page 7
Thus the years passed, and while Middle-earth went backward and light and wisdom faded, the Dúnedain dwelt under the protection of the Valar and in the friendship of the Eldar, and they increased in stature both of mind and body. For though this people used still their own speech, their kings and lords knew and spoke also the Elven tongue, which they had learned in the days of their alliance, and thus they held converse still with the Eldar, whether of Eressëa or of the westlands of Middle-earth. And the loremasters among them learned also the High Eldarin tongue of the Blessed Realm, in which much story and song was preserved from the beginning of the world; and they made letters and scrolls and books, and wrote in them many things of wisdom and wonder in the high tide of their realm, of which all is now forgot.17
These accounts of the first years of life on Númenor end with a reminder that the life of the Númenóreans, for all its excellence, was doomed not to endure.
These things are said for the most part of the days of the bliss of Númenor, which lasted well nigh two thousand years; though the first hints of the later shadows appeared before that. Indeed it was their very arming to take part in the defence of the Eldar and Men of the West of Middle-earth against the wielder of the Shadow (at length revealed as Sauron the Great) that brought about the end of their peace and content. Victory was the herald of their Downfall.18
c. 40 – MANY DWARVES LEAVING THEIR OLD CITIES IN ERED LUIN GO TO MORIA AND SWELL ITS NUMBERS.
Durin is the name that the Dwarves used for the eldest of the Seven Fathers of their race, and the ancestor of all the kings of the Longbeards. He slept alone, until in the deeps of time and the awakening of that people he came to Azanulbizar, and in the caves above Kheled-zâram in the east of the Misty Mountains he made his dwelling, where afterwards were the Mines of Moria renowned in song.
There he lived so long that he was known far and wide as Durin the Deathless. Yet in the end he died before the Elder Days had passed, and his tomb was in Khazad-dûm; but his line never failed, and five times an heir was born in his House so like to his Forefather that he received the name of Durin. He was indeed held by the Dwarves to be the Deathless that returned; for they have many strange tales and beliefs concerning themselves and their fate in the world.
After the end of the First Age the power and wealth of Khazad-dûm was much increased; for it was enriched by many people and much lore and craft when the ancient cities of Nogrod and Belegost in the Blue Mountains were ruined at the breaking of Thangorodrim.1
In The Fellowship of the Ring, it is told how, at the Council of Elrond in the Third Age, Glóin the Dwarf spoke of that time when, ‘amid the splendour of their works of hand the hearts of the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain were troubled’. He said: ‘It is now many years ago… that a shadow of disquiet fell upon our people. Whence it came we did not at first perceive. Words began to be whispered in secret: it was said that we were hemmed in a narrow place, and that greater wealth and splendour would be found in a wider world. Some spoke of Moria: the mighty works of our fathers that are called in our own tongue Khazad-dûm; and they declared that now at last we had the power and numbers to return.’2
442 – DEATH OF ELROS TAR-MINYATUR.
Elros Tar-Minyatur ruled the Númenóreans for four hundred years and ten. For to the Númenóreans long life had been granted, and they remained unwearied for thrice the span of mortal Men in Middle-earth; but to Eärendil’s son the longest life of any Man was given, and to his descendants a lesser span and yet one greater than to others even of the Númenóreans; and so it was until the coming of the Shadow, when the years of the Númenóreans began to wane.1
Elros had four children: three sons, Vardamir Nólimon, Manwendil, and Atanalcar and one daughter (his second born) Tindómiel.
442 – KINGS AND QUEENS OF NúMENOR II:
Tar-Vardamir
Born: SA 61; Died: SA 471 (age 410)
Rule: SA 442
The eldest of Elros Tar-Minyatur’s children, Tar-Vardamir was called Nólimon [‘Learned One’] for his chief love was for ancient lore, which he gathered from Elves and Men. Upon the departure of Elros, being then 381 years of age, he did not ascend the throne, but gave the sceptre to his son. He is nonetheless accounted the second of the Kings, and is deemed to have reigned one year. It remained the custom thereafter until the days of Tar-Atanamir that the King should yield the sceptre to his successor before he died; and the Kings died of free will while yet in vigour of mind.
Tar-Vardamir had four children: Amandil, Vardilmë (daughter), Aulendil and Nolondil.
442 – KINGS AND QUEENS OF NúMENOR III:
Tar-Amandil
Born: SA 192; Died: SA 603 (age 411)
Rule: SA 442-590 (148 years)2
While chronicled as Númenor’s third King, Tar-Amandil was, in truth, the second Ruler of the realm since his father, Vardamir Nólimon, had chosen not to ascend the throne. Amandil was born in the year 192, and the name Amandil comes from the words Aman and -(n)dil meaning, in Quenya, someone who is a ‘lover’ or ‘friend’ of Aman, the ‘Blessed Realm’.
Tar-Amandil had two sons, Elendil and Eärendur, and a daughter, Mairen.
c. 500 – SAURON BEGINS TO STIR AGAIN IN MIDDLE-EARTH.
In the long letter to Milton Waldman outlining the chronology of events in the first Three Ages of Middle-earth, in all likelihood written in 1951, Tolkien sketched a picture of the world in the ‘dark’ days at the beginning of the Second Age1: ‘In the great battles against the First Enemy [Morgoth] the lands were broken and ruined, and the West of Middle-earth became desolate… Also the Orcs (goblins) and other monsters bred by the First Enemy are not wholly destroyed…’ As was told at the conclusion of the Quenta Silmarillion2, whilst through the intervention of the Valar, Morgoth had been ‘Thrust through the Door of Night beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void… Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.’ Those new-sprouting lies and hatreds were tended and nurtured by Sauron:
Of old there was Sauron the Maia, whom the Sindar in Beleriand named Gorthaur. In the beginning of Arda Melkor seduced him to his allegiance, and he became the greatest and most trusted of the servants of the Enemy, and the most perilous, for he could assume many forms, and for long if he willed he could still appear noble and beautiful, so as to deceive all but the most wary.
When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eönwë, the herald of Manwë, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West. But it was not within the power of Eönwë to pardon those of his own order, and he commanded Sauron to return to Aman and there receive the judgement of Manwë. Then Sauron was ashamed, and he was unwilling to return in humiliation and to receive from the Valar a sentence, it might be, of long servitude in proof of his good faith; for under Morgoth his power had been great. Therefore when Eönwë departed he hid himself in Middle-earth; and he fell back into evil, for the bonds that Morgoth had laid upon his were very strong.3
In his letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien would write of Sauron: ‘He lingers in Middle-earth. Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganising and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-earth, “neglected by the gods”, he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power – and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves).’4
Among Tolkien’s later writings, published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien in his History of Middle-earth5, Tolkien gave consideration to Sauron’s motives that indicate a striking subtlety of reflection on the characteristics of his protagonist.
Sauron was ‘greater’, effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Why? Because, though he was far smaller by natural stature, he had not yet fallen so low. Eventually he also squandered his power (of being) in the endeavour to gain control of others. But he was not obliged to expend so much of himself. To gain domination over Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the physical constituents of the Earth – hence all things that were born on Earth and lived on and by it, beasts or plants or incarnate spirits, were liable to be ‘stained’…
Sauron, however, inherited the ‘corruption’ of Arda, and only spent his (much more limited) power on the Rings; for it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he desired to dominate. In this way Sauron was also wiser than Melkor-Morgoth. Sauron was not a beginner of discord; and he probably knew more of the ‘Music’ [the Music of the Ainur, the great song of creation before the beginning of Time] than did Melkor, whose mind had always been filled with his own plans and devices, and gave little attention to other things…
Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction… But like all minds of this cast, Sauron’s love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron’s right to be their supreme lord), his ‘plans’, the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself.*
Elsewhere in Middle-earth there was peace for many years; yet the lands were for the most part savage and desolate, save only where the people of Beleriand came. Many Elves dwelt there indeed, as they had dwelt through the countless years, wandering free in the wide lands far from the Sea; but they were Avari, to whom the deeds of Beleriand were but a rumour and Valinor only a distant name. And in the south and in the further east Men multiplied; and most of them turned to evil, for Sauron was at work.6
Seeing the desolation of the world, Sauron said in his heart that the Valar, having overthrown Morgoth, had again forgotten Middle-earth; and his pride grew apace.7
521 – BIRTH IN NÚMENOR OF SILMARIËN.
590 – KINGS AND QUEENS OF NÚMENOR IV:
Tar-Elendil
Born: SA 350; Died: SA 751 (age 401)
Rule: SA 590-740 (150 years)
The name Elendil in Quenya had the meaning of ‘Star-lover’ (one who loves or studies the stars) from the words elen (‘star’) and -(n)dil (‘friend, lover or devotee’) with the additional interpretation of ‘Elf-friend’, a common appellation among those Edain who had close-friendship with the Eldar, from Eled (‘star-folk’) in referencing the Elves.1
[Elendil] was also called Parmaitë,2 for with his own hand he made many books and legends of the lore gathered by his grandfather [Tar-Vardamir]. He married late in his life, and his eldest child was a daughter, Silmarien, born in the year 521, whose son was Valandil. Of Valandil came the Lords of Andúnië, of whom the last was Amandil father of Elendil the Tall, who came to Middle-earth after the Downfall.
A second daughter, Isilmë, was born in 532 and son, Meneldur in the year 543 who, because of the then law that a female of the line could not succeed, would become the sixth King of Númenor as Tar-Meneldur.
In Tar-Elendil’s reign the ships of the Númenóreans first came back to Middle-earth.
600 – THE FIRST SHIPS OF THE NÚMENÓREANS APPEAR OFF THE COASTS.
Above all arts they nourished ship-building and sea-craft, and they became mariners whose like shall never be again since the world was diminished; and voyaging upon the wide seas was the chief feat and adventure of their hardy men in the gallant days of their youth.
But the Lords of Valinor forbade them to sail so far westward that the coasts of Númenor could no longer be seen; and for long the Dúnedain were content, though they did not fully understand the purpose of this ban. But the design of Manwë was that the Númenóreans should not be tempted to seek for the Blessed Realm, nor desire to overpass the limits set to their bliss, becoming enamoured of the immortality of the Valar and the Eldar and the lands where all things endure.
For in those days Valinor still remained in the world visible, and there Ilúvatar permitted the Valar to maintain upon Earth an abiding place, a memorial of that which might have been if Morgoth had not cast his shadow on the world. This the Númenóreans knew full well; and at times, when all the air was clear and the sun was in the east, they would look out and descry far off in the west a city white-shining on a distant shore, and a great harbour and a tower. For in those days the Númenóreans were far-sighted; yet even so it was only the keenest eyes among them that could see this vision, from the Meneltarma, maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as it was lawful for them to go. For they did not dare to break the Ban of the Lords of the West. But the wise among them knew that this distant land was not indeed the Blessed Realm of Valinor, but was Avallónë, the haven of the Eldar upon Eressëa, easternmost of the Undying Lands…
Thus it was that because of the Ban of the Valar the voyages of the Dúnedain in those days went ever eastward and not westward, from the darkness of the North to the heats of the South, and beyond the South to the Nether Darkness; and they came even into the inner seas, and sailed about Middle-earth and glimpsed from their high prows the Gates of Morning in the East.1
When six hundred years had passed from the beginning of the Second Age Vëantur, Captain of King’s Ships under Tar-Elendil, first achieved the voyage to Middle-earth. He brought his ship Entulessë (which signifies ‘Return’) into Mithlond on the spring winds blowing from the west; and he returned in the autumn of the following year. Thereafter seafaring became the chief enterprise for daring and hardihood among the men of Númenor…2
And the Dúnedain came at times to the shores of the Great Lands, and they took pity on the forsaken world of Middle-earth; and the Lords of Númenor set foot again upon the western shores in the Dark Years of Men, and none yet dared to withstand them. For most of the Men of that age that sat under the Shadow were now grown weak and fearful.3
But for long the crews of the great Númenórean ships came unarmed among the men of Middle-earth; and though they had axes and bows aboard for the felling of timber and the hunting for food upon wild shores owned by no man, they did not bear these when they sought out the men of the lands.4
In a lengthy note in Unfinished Tales, Christopher Tolkien quotes from ‘a late philological essay’ by his father giving ‘a description of the first meeting of the Númenóreans with Men of Eriador at that time’:
It was six hundred years after the departure of the survivors of the Atani [the Quenya name for the Edain or Men] over the sea to Númenor that a ship first came again out of the West to Middle-earth and passed up the Gulf of Lhûn. Its captain and mariners were welcomed by Gil-galad; and thus was begun the friendship and alliance of Númenor with the Eldar of Lindon. The news spread swiftly and Men in Eriador were filled with wonder. Although in the First Age they had dwelt in the East, rumours of the terrible war ‘beyond the Western Mountains’ [i.e. Ered Luin] had reached them; but their traditions preserved no clear account of it, and they believed that all the Men who dwelt in the lands beyond had been destroyed or drowned in great tumults of fire and inrushing seas. But since it was still said among them that those Men had in years beyond memory been kinsmen of their own, they sent messages to Gil-galad asking leave to meet the shipmen ‘who had returned from death in the deeps of the Sea.’ Thus it came about that there was a meeting between them on the Tower Hills; and to that meeting with the Númenóreans came twelve Men only out of Eriador, Men of high heart and courage, for most of their people feared that the newcomers were perilous spirits of the Dead. But when they looked on the shipmen fear left them, though for a while they stood silent in awe; for mighty as they were themselves accounted among their kin, the shipmen resembled rather Elvish lords than mortal Men in bearing and apparel. Nonetheless they felt no doubt of their ancient kinship; and likewise the shipmen looked with glad surprise upon the Men of Middle-earth, for it had been believed in Númenor that the Men left behind were descended from the evil Men who in the last days of the war against Morgoth had been summoned by him out of the East. But now they looked upon faces free from the Shadow and Men who could have walked in Númenor and not been thought aliens save in their clothes and their arms. Then suddenly, after the silence, both the Númenóreans and the Men of Eriador spoke words of welcome and greeting in their own tongues, as if addressing friends and kinsmen after a long parting. At first they were disappointed, for neither side could understand the other; but when they mingled in friendship they found that they shared very many words still clearly recognisable, and others that could be understood with attention, and they were able to converse haltingly about simple matters.5
