Abby Epplett, Historian

In this week’s installment of my mini-series on the Appendixes of The Lord of the Rings , I focus on Appendix A (ii), which is divided into two sections — “The Northern Line: Heirs of Isildur”, and “The Southern Line: Heirs of Anárion”. This section reads similar to a genealogy, last discussed during my overview of Appendix A , but instead of moving from father to son, the lists move between kings, and later to chieftains or stewards. The many names and dates become overwhelming, even to a seasoned reader, so I am selecting a few notable kings in the lists and drawing comparisons between their fictional stories and those in real world history. Founding an Empire Both lists begin with Elendil, discussed last week in my essay on Appendix A (i) as a flood survivor character, similar to Noah in Genesis 6 or Utnapishtim in The Epic of Gilgamesh . Upon arriving in Middle-earth, Elendil took a different role: the founder of an empire. History is filled with famous first king

For the second week of my miniseries on the Appendixes of The Lord of the Rings , I look at the brief introduction to “Appendix A: Annals of the Kings and Rulers”, which appears on page 341 of Part Three The Return of the King , directly opposite the final page of dialogue. Annals — written histories focusing on political leaders — are found across the real world in literate cultures, but few survived in legible forms or are deemed interesting enough to study. J.R.R. Tolkien successfully managed both when construction the fictional history of Middle-earth. This introduction described how the following parts of the section were written in-universe. Bilbo Baggins had an interest in the First Age, as Elrond’s family was influential during that time, although the text does not clarify if these sections were part of his translations from Elvish languages that he gifted to Frodo. “Appendix A III Durin’s Folk” was based on work by Gimli, noted in the text for maintaining a friends

Do you enjoy reading convoluted histories of transcribed and translated documents with discrepancies between surviving copies and a missing original manuscript? Then look no further than The Red Book of Westmarch , also known at The Red Book of Periannath , which is the fiction origin of The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , and possibly other works by J.R.R. Tolkien, including parts of The Silmarillion . A highly detailed explanation concerning the creation of this manuscript and its early copies is given in “Note on the Shire Records”, the final section of the Prologue found in The Lord of the Rings: Part One The Fellowship of the Ring . While the confusing contents of this two-and-a-quarter page explanation have been reviewed elsewhere, I will take a few paragraphs to explain what fictitious books were presumably used in Tolkien’s “translation”, the framing device for the work. Then, I will cover a few rediscovered works in the real world, along with several historical hoaxes

While I have often read about the Dead Sea Scrolls and referenced them in my work, I did not know the detailed history of the scrolls. Fortunately, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) — the current holder of the scrolls — has created The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library to share these artifacts, explain how the scrolls were written, and give a timeline for how they came into the IAA collection. Google assisted in the creation of the website, which is available in English, Modern Hebrew, German, Russian, and Arabic, allowing a wide range of people to study the scrolls. The website contains images of the scrolls themselves, along with opportunity to “Learn about the Scrolls” and “About the Project” of digitization. Featured Scrolls While all scrolls found during “the greatest archaeological event of the twentieth century” (although the website might be biased) are highly important to the understanding of life in Ancient Israel, some scrolls contain more or bett

A major motif in The Lord of the Rings is the presence of large bodies of water, especially rivers and the Sea. In the Prologue “1 Concerning Hobbits”, the narrator explains that Hobbits had developed an antagonistic view of this type of water, along with the exploration and cultures associated with it. Hobbits of the Shire and the neighboring settlement Westfarthing lived not far from three Elf-towers located in the appropriately named Tower Hills and believed “one could see the Sea from the top of that [tallest] tower… no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it… the Sea became a word of fear among them, and a token of death”. (8) This passage also describes their dualistic relationship with Elves because of that Race’s association with the Sea. Although Hobbits admired, even envied, Elf culture by appropriating their crafts and a variant of their writing system, along with being ruled by the Elf-like or Elf-descended Fallohide Hobbits, as discussed in my post last week , at t

Location plays an essential role in The Lord of the Rings . Already in the first section of the Prologue, “1 Concerning Hobbits”, several place names have been revealed, although not discussed in detail. These place names appear in clusters. Westmarch and the Shire are home to modern Hobbits. Greenwood the Great, which became Mirkwood, the Misty Mountains, and Eriador were the lands of their oldest ancestors. Different groups travelled by foot through Weathertop and the Wilderland, by boat on the Great River Anduin to Loudwater, Tharbad, and Dunland; or using a combination of means from Rivendell down the River Hoarwell. The lengthy paragraphs of invented places continue while describing the complexities of Hobbit colonization, which becomes increasingly difficult to decipher when places bear multiple names in distinct invented languages.

The Lord of the Rings: Part One, Fellowship of the Ring opens on page 1 not with lush scenery or snappy dialog, although plenty of this will come later, but with an approximately 7,500-word essay on the fictional world of Middle-earth. Fourth grade Abby found this authorial decision to be delightful, but readers unprepared for a short thesis might quietly place the book back on the shelf and step away. For the next few weeks, I will dive into the Prologue from the perspective of a historian, examining where events in the essay mirror those in the real world. Today’s post reflects on the authorial decisions of writing style for the overall Prologue, the origin of the text that Tolkien claims to translate, and the use of anthropology in the first section, “1 Concerning Hobbits”. The longest of the five sections, J.R.R. Tolkien details the physical traits and skills of the race; their evolution, migration, and colonization; and how their beliefs differ from other races in the wor