The Peoples of Middle-earth (27 page)

In B 2 the openings of these two paragraphs, $$24 - 5, were

.changed to the text given in SA: 'These things took place in the days of Tar-Kiryatan the Shipbuilder, and of Tar-Atanamir his son ...", and 'Then Tar-Ankalimon, son of Atanamir, became King ...' In this

'second phase' not only was the order of Atanamir and Kiryatan reversed, but (although it was still to him that the Messengers came) Atanamir becomes the thirteenth king (the original words in A, 'of those kings that succeeded Elros' being now removed: in The Line of Elros in Unfinished Tales (p. 221) Kiryatan was the twelfth and Atanamir the thirteenth, with Elros counted as the first). The second phase (B 2) of the Akallabeth thus represents, or rather rests on, a further large development of the Numenorean history from that seen in the first phase, or AB.

At the end of $25 there is a paragraph in AB which was omitted in its entirety in B 2 (i.e. it was struck out on the B typescript): The Elendili dwelt mostly near the west coasts of the land; but as the shadow deepened in men's hearts, the estrangement between the two parties grew greater, and the king commanded them to remove and dwell in the east of the island, far from the haven of Andunie, to which the Eldar had been wont to come; and thereafter the Eldar visited them only seldom and in secret. The chief dwelling of the Elf-friends in the later days was thus about the harbour of Romenna; and thence many set sail and returned to Middle-earth, where they might speak with the Elves in the Kingdom of Gil-galad. For they still taught to their children the Eldarin tongues, whereas among the King's Men these tongues fell into disuse, and even the heirs of Earendil became known to their people by names in the Numenorean tongue. And the kings desired to put an end to all friendship between their people and the Eldar (whom they called now the Spies of the Valar), hoping to keep their deeds and their counsels hidden from the Lords of the West. But all was known to Manwe that they did, and the Valar were wroth with the Kings of Numenor and gave them counsel no more.

For the explanation of this omission see p. 155. B 2 now continues with SA $26.

$26. Thus the bliss of Westernesse became diminished ... At the end of this paragraph AB has 'after the days of [Ar-Kiryatan >]

Tar-Kiryatan' (Kiryatan being then the son of Atanamir); in B 2

this became 'after the days of Tar-Ankalimon' (who has already appeared in $25 as the son of Atanamir).

There is extant some original drafting for the passage concerning the mounting obsession with death among the Numenoreans, including the following passage that was not taken up in A: And some taught that there was a land of shades filled with the wraiths of the things that they had known and loved upon the mortal earth, and that in shadow the dead should come there bearing with them the shadows of their possessions.

$27. Thus it came to pass ... This paragraph in SA goes back without change to the earliest text.

$28. In all this the Elf-friends had small part ... The end of this paragraph, from 'lending them aid against Sauron', was altered in SA; the authentic text reads:

But the King's Men sailed far away to the south, and though the kingdoms and strongholds they made have left many rumours in the legends of Men, the Eldar know naught of them. Only Pelargir they remember, for there was the haven of the Elf-friends above the mouths of Anduin the Great.

Pengolod implied, no doubt, that after the great division arose among the Numenoreans the Elves of Eressea were cut off from any knowledge of the imperial enterprises of the King's Men in the further south of Middle-earth. But with the removal of Pengolod and AElfwine from the published text, the Akallabeth lost its anchorage in expressly Eldarin lore; and this led me (with as I now think an excess of vigilance) to alter the end of the paragraph. - This was the first appearance of Pelargir in the narratives of Numenor.

$29. In this Age, as is elsewhere told ... In AB the second sentence of this paragraph ran: 'It was indeed in the days of Atanamir in Numenor that in Mordor the Tower of Barad-dur was full-wrought, and thereafter Sauron began to strive for the dominion of Middle-earth ...' In B 2 this was altered to the text of SA, 'Already in the days of Tar-Minastir, the eleventh King of Numenor, he had fortified the land of Mordor and had built there the Tower of Barad-dur ...'

The appearance here of Tar-Minastir the eleventh king is of course a further element in the enlarged history already encountered in $$24-6. So also in this paragraph the text of AB 'nor did he forget the aid that they [the Numenoreans] had rendered to Gilgalad of old' was changed in B 2 to 'the aid that Tar-Minastir had rendered ...'

In the sentence 'And Sauron hated the Numenoreans, because of the deeds of their fathers and their ancient alliance with the Elves'

the word 'alliance' was an early change from the original word

'friendship'; see under $9 above.

The words in SA 'in that time when the One Ring was forged and there was war between Sauron and the Elves in Eriador' were an editorial addition.

$30. Yet Sauron was ever guileful ... This paragraph goes back to A unaltered, except for the early change of 'great lords of Numenor'

to 'great lords of Numenorean race'. - The name Ulairi of the Ringwraiths seems to mark a period in my father's work: it is found also in a text of the Tale of Years (p. 175); in The Heirs of Elendil (Chapter VII); and in Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (published in The Silmarillion).

At the end of the paragraph my father wrote on the typescript C, to follow 'he began to assail the strong places of the Numenoreans upon the shores of the sea': 'but Umbar he could not yet take'. See $41 below.

After SA $30 there is a second passage in AB (see p. 151) that was excluded in B 2:

In those days there arose and took the throne of the Sea-kings the great Tar-Calion, whom men called Ar-Pharazon the Golden, the mightiest and the proudest of all his line. And twelve kings had ruled the Numenoreans between Elros and Ar-Pharazon, and slept now in their deep tombs under the mount of the Meneltarma, lying upon beds of gold. Great and glorious was Ar-Pharazon, sitting upon his carven throne in the city of Ar-minaleth in the noon-tide of his realm; and to him came the masters of ships and men returning out of the East, and they spoke of Sauron, how he named himself the Great, and purposed to become master of all Middle-earth, and to destroy even Numenor, if that might be.

Then great was the anger of Ar-Pharazon hearing these tidings, and he sat long in thought, and his mood darkened. And he determined without the counsel of the Valar, or the aid of any wisdom but his own, that he would demand the allegiance and homage of this lord; for in his pride he deemed that no king should ever arise so mighty as to vie with the Heir of Earendil.

Ar-Pharazon is here named the fourteenth king, since 'twelve kings had ruled the Numenoreans between Elros and Ar-Pharazon'; and this agrees with The Drowning of Anadune (10) and also with the Scheme on p. 151, where Ar-Pharazon is numbered 13 and Elros is not counted.

At this point (i.e. following the conclusion of SA $30) there is a direction on the typescript B to take in a rider, this being a finely-written manuscript of four sides.

$31. In those days the Shadow grew deeper ... to $40 Great was the anger ... This passage in SA (pp. 267 - 70) follows almost exactly the text of the rider just referred to. Here there entered the narrative of Numenor the story of the reigns of Ar-Adunakhor and Ar-Gimilzor; of the Lords of Andunie, who were of the Line of Elros; of the sons of Ar-Gimilzor, Inziladun and Gimilkhad, and their conflict; of the unhappy reign of Inziladun (Tar-Palantir); and of the forced marriage of his daughter Miriel (Ar-Zimraphel), the rightful Queen, to Pharazon son of Gimilkhad, who seized the sceptre for himself.

The few significant points in which the text of the rider was changed in SA are as follows.

In $31 I altered 'the twentieth king' (Ar-Adunakhor) and 'the twenty-third king' (Ar-Gimilzor) to 'nineteenth' and 'twenty-second', and in $38 I altered 'four and twenty Kings and Queens had ruled the Numenoreans' before Ar-Pharazon to 'three and twenty'. My reason for making these (incorrect) changes (an omission in the list of the rulers of Numenor given in Appendix A (I, i)) has been fully explained in Unfinished Tales p. 226, note 11.

In $33 I omitted two notes (belonging to the same time as the manuscript and forming part of it) concerning the Lords of Andunie. The first of these refers to the words 'for they were of the line of Elros' and reads: 'And they took names in Quenya, as did no other house save the kings'; the second refers to the following words, 'being descended from Silmarien, daughter of Tar-Elendil the fourth king':

And in their line the sceptre would indeed have descended had the law been in his day as it was later made. For when Tar-Ankalime became the first ruling Queen, being the only child of Tar-Aldarion the Sixth King, the law was made that the oldest child of the King whether man or woman should receive the sceptre and the kingly authority; but Silmarien was older than her brother Meneldur who succeeded Tar-Elendil.

On this see Unfinished Tales p. 208, where the different formulations of the new law brought in by Tar-Aldarion are discussed.

The law is stated here in the same words as in Appendix A (I, i), i.e.

simple primogeniture irrespective of sex (rather than inheritance of the throne by a daughter only if the Ruler had no son).(11) In $37 the Adunaic name of Tar-Miriel is not Ar-Zintraphel in the long rider, but Ar-Zimrahil, and this is the form in all the sources: in The Drowning of Anadune (IX.373, $48), in Akallabeth AB (see $78 below), in The Line of Elros (Unfinished Tales p. 224), and in Aldarion and Erendis (ibid. p. 190). Ar-Zimraphel actually occurs in one place only, a change made by my father in the present paragraph on the amanuensis typescript C. This I adopted in SA, and the change to Ar-Zimraphel was also made silently to the passages in The Line of Elros and Aldarion and Erendis.

Under $$24-5 and 30 above I have given two passages in AB that were struck out when the long rider was introduced. The first of these, following SA $25 and beginning 'The Elendili dwelt mostly near the west coasts ...' (p. 151) was largely re-used in the rider (SA $32, Now the Elendili dwelt mostly in the western regions ...), but the forced removal of the Elf-friends to the east of Numenor was now carried out by Ar-Gimilzor, whereas in AB the king who commanded it is not named. The second omitted passage, following SA $30 and beginning 'In those days there arose and took the throne of the Sea-kings the great Tar-Calion' (p. 153), was postponed to the end of the rider, where it reappears in revised form (SA $$38-40, p. 270). At the words in $40 'so mighty as to vie with the Heir of Earendil' the rider ends, and the AB or 'first phase' text takes up again with 'Therefore he began in that time to smithy great hoard of weapons ...'.(12)

Several pages were placed with the rider, written on the same paper, in which my father is seen devising a different story of the marriage of Pharazon and MirieL For this see pp. 159 ff.

$41. And men saw his sails coming up out of the sunset ... In the first sentence the words 'gleaming with red and gold' (of the sails of the ships of Ar-Pharazon) should read 'gleaming with red gold' (a phrase that goes back to The Drowning of Anadune, IX.389, $28).

In the second sentence I altered the original text 'Umbar, where there was a mighty haven that no hand had wrought' to 'Umbar, where was the mighty haven of the Numenoreans that no hand had wrought', in view of Appendix B, Second Age 2280: 'Umbar is made into a great fortress of Numenor' (nearly a thousand years before the coming of Ar-Pharazon). For the same reason I changed the original text in the following sentence, from 'Empty and silent under the sickle moon was the land when the King of the Sea set foot upon the shore' to 'Empty and silent were all the lands about when the King of the Sea marched upon Middle-earth'. (It is probable that when my father wrote this he did not yet suppose that Umbar was a Numenorean fortress and harbour at the time of Ar-Pharazon's landing.)

$$42 ff. In the remainder of the Akallabeth the text of the original manuscript A underwent very little change indeed at any subsequent stage; there is thus no further need to comment on the text paragraph by paragraph. Only occasional editorial alteration was made in SA, and in the rest of this account it can be understood that except as stated the published work follows the original exactly, or at most with very slight modification not worth recording.(13) $44. Yet such was the cunning of his mind ... (p. 271). The text of AB reads 'all the councillors, save Valandil only, began to fawn upon him'. In B 2 my father changed Valandil to Amandil here and at all subsequent occurrences. Since Amandil had not been mentioned in the text previously I added the words 'lord of Andunie' in SA. - It is curious that the naming of Elendil's father Valandil was a reversion to The Lost Road (V.60, 69). In the course of the writing of The Lord of the Rings the name was variously and fleetingly applied to a brother of Elendil, to a son of Elendil, and to Elendil himself (VI.169, 175; VII.121, 123-4).