Abby Epplett, Historian

While Appendix D is named for the Shire Calendar, this section actually covers calendars from multiple Middle-earth cultures spanning thousands of years. The construction of these calendars presented an unresolved mystery: why were they so similar to modern Western calendars? A real-world explanation was that Tolkien was most familiar with the Gregorian calendar, but a Middle-earth explanation was more complex.

After several weeks of somewhat dry lists and dates, I arrive at a story with dialog! The full name of this section is “(v) Here Follows Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”. The text existed in-universe as a longer body of work, but only a portion was appended to The Red Book of Minas Tirith , then copied into the Thain’s Book , part of the Shire Records that I discussed several weeks ago . As the title suggests, the section gives a short biography of Aragorn with a special focus on his relationship with Arwen Undómiel. The storyline of this section paralleled aspects of real-world history and culture including marriage customs, elves and fairies in folklore, royal standards or flags, epic poetry, and religious allegory. Age of First Marriage and Fairy Foster Father The section opens with Arathorn son of the chieftain Arador seeking a wife and wanting none but Gilraen the Fair. The one problem was that Arathorn was fifty-six years old, and Gilraen “had not reached th...

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...

My latest online exhibit adventure was visiting A Portrait of Tenochtitlan by Dutch technical artist Thomas Kole . Debuting a few months ago in September 2023, this blend of digital models and modern drone photography taken by Andrés Semo Garcia allows visitors to better understand the early 16 th century layout of what is now Ciudad de México [Mexico City] . Translations of the informational signage into Spanish and Nahuatl provided by Rodrigo Ortega Acoltzi add authenticity to the project. Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Mexica empire, a people also known as the Aztecs. Located inside the salty sea that once flooded the Basin of Mexico, the metropolis merged with its twin city, Tlateloco, to become a major place of trade. At its height, the population of Tenochtilan reached 200,000 people, about the size of the nearest city to me, Worcester, MA . As for the entire Triple Alliance [ Triple Alianza , Excan Tlahtoloyan ] formed with the city-states of Tlacopan and T...

Last year during Day 2 of Smithsonian National Education Summit 2023 , I learned about Becoming US , a high school level educational resource for teaching about immigration and migration. Based on the website of the National Museum of American History (NMAH) , this resource includes classroom guides, a glossary, news articles, videos, and activities for students in 8 th through 11 th grade. Although I have not been in that demographic for over ten years, I enjoyed learning about these topics from multiple perspectives. About This section explained that the online project began in 2014 as part of a collection of in-person, print, and virtual productions. The exhibit Many Voices, One Nation and accompanying book Many Voices, One Nation: Material Culture Reflections on Race and Migration in the United States provided much of the material found in the lessons. Resources Preparing to Teach NMAH provides a forty-four page guide made in collaboration with Teachi...

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...

Yesterday — Thursday, March 21 at 7:00 p.m. — I watched the third installment of the 2024 season of Parked at Home featuring Amistad National Recreation Area in Texas with park archaeologist Jack Johnson. Park ranger Allison Horrocks of Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park started the webinar by explaining the migration of butterflies between New England and Texas, which takes four generations to complete. She compared this migration to “The Butterfly Effect”, a theory that small events can affect people around the world. In this way, the dam and mill in Pawtucket, RI built in 1793 started social changes and industrialization across the young United States.

On Wednesday, March 15 at 7:00 p.m., Boston University professor of archeology David Carballo presented Collision of Worlds: An Archaeological Perspective on the Spanish Invasion of Aztec Mexico . The talk was based on Carballo’s similarly titled book , which was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. As part of AIA Archeology Hour , a virtual evening lecture series organized by the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) , this event was moderated by Rabun Taylor, professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin , and hosted by the Central Texas (Austin) Society, a chapter of the AIA . Carballo began his talk by explaining that his book covers three main perspectives about the Spanish Invasion of Aztec Mexico. The Archaeological Perspective focuses on material culture and the world, like “landscapes, places, and things”. The Transatlantic Perspective , traditionally used to emphasize the technological differences between the Spanish ...