• About

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: France

Oh, Come, Let Us Adore…

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1984, Adolf Hitler, altar, Ar-Pharazon, Armenelos, Artemis, Aulis, Avebury, Aztec, Benito Mussolini, Big Brother, France, Gallic Celts, George Orwell, Germany, Gondor, Greek temple, Hera, Herodotus, human sacrifice, Iphigenia, Melkor, Nazis, nemeton, Numenor, occupation, Olympia, Pantheon, Rome, sacrifice, Sauron, shrine, Soviet Union, Stalin, Stonehenge, Tenochtitlan, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The War of the Ring, Tolkien, Valar, World War II, worship

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

Some time ago, we posted a piece on what Sauron wanted out of the War of the Ring. Our evidence was this, spoken to Aragorn and Gandalf and the allied army which had marched to the Morannon as a distraction, by the Lieutenant of the Tower:

“The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret. All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely. West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains and the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

These are political conditions: Sauron is demanding territory, just as any conqueror in our world would. When France was occupied by the Nazis in 1940–something with which JRRT would have been quite familiar while writing The Lord of the Rings—here’s a map of what Hitler demanded—and got.

France-occupation

The last sentence of Sauron’s conditions even reminds us of the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini—although not how Mussolini would have viewed it.

Hitler-and-Mussolini

Hitler had another dictator-partner for a short time, however, Stalin, whom he distrusted even more than Mussolini.

STALIN-HITLER-2-676x450

And Stalin, unlike Sauron, won his war and swallowed all of central Europe, as well as eastern Germany.

post-war-soviet-influence

It’s clear that George Orwell had this dictator in mind when he was creating his “Big Brother”, in 1984, even to his physical description (from a poster—it appears that no one has actually seen Big Brother in the flesh): “an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features…”

stalin

These posters were so constructed that, “It was one of those pictures…which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.”

Big-Brother-Is-Watching-You-Poster

In fact, as we think about the image, its slogan, “Big Brother is Watching” might be applied to the All-Seeing Eye.

sauron-eye

That all-seeing eye, however, has another meaning, we believe, and it has to do with a goal which the Lieutenant doesn’t mention, but JRRT does:

“Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants.  If he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all the rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world.” (Letters, 244)

Thus, like various gods through the history of the world, by showing himself not a full physical form, but only as an eye, we can imagine that Sauron was claiming divine omniscience.

This set us to thinking: there is virtually no trace of religion in the latter part of the Third Age and certainly no religious structures. What might Sauron build as a shrine—to himself? And, as a corollary, what would he demand for worship?

In Western Europe, some the earliest shrines were not actual buildings, but sites claimed to be somehow invested with divinity, such as groves of trees, something which the Gallic Celts called a nemeton, perhaps related to the Old Irish word nemed, meaning, according to the on-line OI/Middle Irish dictionary, “(small) sacred place”.

DollTorWest0801

It’s easy to see how this could lead to the idea of a stone circle (perhaps beginning with a ditch of the sort which could ring settlements?), like that at Avebury.

Avebury

Or its more concentrated version, Stonehenge.

stonehenge-copy1

Another possibility might be to organize that grove into lines of pillars—using the trunks of the trees—and adding a roof—and you get a Greek temple.

templeofhera

Herodotus tells us that, in his time, this temple, devoted to Hera at Olympia, still had a couple of wooden columns, showing just how old it was. (There are also building elements, like pegs—all in stone in later time—which mirror earlier wooden construction.)

In the Greek world (and the Roman, as well), worship was done outside the building, at an altar in front.

snake-altar-from-mausoleum-of-halicarnassus-in-bodrum

That worship would consist of prayers and sacrifices. As the majority of the gods were believed to live in a place above humans (Olympus—an actual mountain, but also, seemingly, an imaginary location in the sky), sacrifices were conveyed in smoke. These could be as simple as incense

elt200810220812093544851-142058F954A638F8693

or as complicated as the barbecue after a multiple animal-slaughter, like the Roman suovetaurilia (“pigsheepbullactivity”). (Guess who got to consume the actual meat?)

multipleanimalsacrifice

Classical people did not practice human sacrifice, considering it abominable, but it may have existed, at least in desperate circumstances in the far past, as has been preserved in the Greek story of Iphigenia, murdered at the altar of Artemis at Aulis to propitiate the goddess, who had blocked the Greeks from sailing to attack Troy.

Black-figured Tyrrhenian amphora (wine-jar) attributed to the Timiades Painter

Of course, when it comes to wholesale, regular human sacrifice, we immediately think of Aztec devotion to their god, Huitzilopochtli, who was fed on the blood of human hearts at the top of his temple in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.

huitzilopochtli

ThinkstockPhotos-98193978

sacrifice-2

And this brings us back to Sauron, his temple, his worship. Because there is so much wonderful material to work from in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, in general, we confine ourselves to those and the Letters, but a little wider research gave us a clue—a horrible but not surprising clue—to answer our original question. In the Silmarillion, we found this:

“But Sauron caused to be built upon the hill in the midst of the city of the Numenoreans, Armenelos the Golden, a mighty temple; and it was in the form of a circle at the base, and there the walls were fifty feet in thickness, and the width of the base was five hundred feet across the center, and the walls rose from the ground five hundred feet, and they were crowned with a mighty dome. And that dome was roofed all with silver, and rose glittering in the sun, so that the light of it could be seen afar off; but soon the light was darkened and the silver became black.” (The Silmarillion, “Akallabeth”, 273)

As people who are much involved with the Greco-Roman world, this description immediately brings to our minds the Pantheon, in Rome, whose dome was sheathed in copper, until that was stolen by the eastern emperor Constans II in 663AD, only to be stolen from him en route by Saracen pirates. It’s not 500 feet by 500 feet (152.4m.), of course, being only about 140 (42.67m.), but it’s certainly large and impressive—and circular, with a mighty dome.

aerial-view-pantheon

26.pantheon

Pantheon_Rome_(1)

But why did the “silver become black”? Do we have a bad feeling about this?

“For there was an altar of fire in the midst of the temple, and in the topmost of the dome there was a louver, whence there issued a great smoke…Thereafter the fire and smoke went up without ceasing; for the power of Sauron daily increased, and in that temple, with the spilling of blood and torment and great wickedness, men made sacrifice to Melkor that he should release them from Death. And most often from among the Faithful they chose their victims…”

Sauron, once Melkor’s servant, had gained great power over the Numenorean king, Ar-Pharazon, using it to persuade the king to attack the Valar—and thus bring about the destruction of Numenor. Sauron’s spirit survived that destruction, and perhaps his memory of Melkor’s temple and its worship would have, as well?

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

PS

We can’t resist adding this wonderful John Howe impression of the drowning of the city of Armenelos…

John_Howe_-_The_Drowning_of_Numenor

 

Armistice and Simbelmyne

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Allies, armistice, Armistice Day, barbed wire, Belgium, Christmas Truce of 1914, Eisenhower, Evermind, flamethrowers, France, German Government, Guy Fawkes Day, John McCrae, machine gun, maxim gun, military, military rifle, Paris, poisoned gas, poppies, Remembrance Day, Simbelmyne, tank, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, truce, Veterans' Day, Western Front, Woodrow Wilson, Word War I, WWI Trenches

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

“At the foot of the walled hill the way ran under the shadow of many mounds, high and green. Upon their western sides the grass was white as with drifted snow: small white flowers sprang there like countless stars amid the turf.

‘Look!’ said Gandalf. ‘How fair are the bright eyes in the grass! Evermind they are called, simbelmyne in this land of Men, for they blossom in all seasons of the year, and grow where dead men rest. Behold! we are come to the great barrows where the sires of Theoden sleep.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

simbelmynemounds

Like our bonus posting last week, for Guy Fawkes Day, this one is tied to a specific day, now called “Veterans’ Day” in the US, and “Remembrance Day” by our linguistic cousins around the world.

November 11th here was originally called “Armistice Day” when it was first declared by Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The change to “Veterans’ Day” came in 1954, but, to us, it would be good if it had remained as it was, both its name and what it commemorated, and President Eisenhower had chosen to add another holiday to the calendar, instead.

The armistice was, of course, the truce which marked the beginning of the end of World War I, the date and time—the 11th hour of the 11th day of 1918—agreed upon by commissions of the Allies and the Imperial German government who met in a railway car outside Paris in early November, after over a month of on-again-off-again negotiations. This was only a truce—the actual peace treaty was not agreed upon and didn’t come into effect until 10 January, 1920—but it did stop the fighting in the west almost immediately.

Armisticetrain_(slight_crop) Waffenstillstand_gr

The war to which it gave a permanent pause had been appalling in its losses: over 17 million people had been killed and 20 million wounded and the weapons used to kill 11 million soldiers had gone from the ordinary military rifle to the machine gun to barbed wire to poisoned gas to flamethrowers to the tank—and that was just on land.

Short_Magazine_Lee-Enfield_Mk_1_(1903)_-_UK_-_cal_303_British_-_Armémuseum

gassed

barbedwire

1280px-Sargent,_John_Singer_(RA)_-_Gassed_-_Google_Art_Project

flamethrower-10215292

tank-wire

In the process, it had driven men to dig 500 miles of trenches on the Western Front, where they lived a life of perpetual misery.

_77694555_sommetrench

Thus, the news, even of a truce, was the best of news to soldiers and civilians on both sides.

armistice

The price for that truce and for the eventual peace was almost too much to bear: all over northern France and southern Belgium seemingly endless, but necessary, cemeteries had gradually sprung up and, with the coming of peace, had been rationalized and formalized so that they looked like militarized civilian graveyards. To visit that area today is to understand, in some small way, what a horror that war was for those caught in it. And this is just the Western Front: there are many more burial places to be.

zonnebeke.passendale.tynecot.air_.dkv_

In 1921, people in the US began to wear little artificial poppies as a symbol of remembrance on 11 November and the custom was adopted abroad and still continues in Canada and Britain, at least. It is said that the custom was inspired by this poem, written by a Canadian soldier on the Western Front, John McCrae, in 1915. He had noted that poppies seemed to grow more quickly on ground which had been freshly turned—in the fighting and in the burials afterwards. And the image of the flowers, bright red as fresh blood, scattered across the fields was too powerful for a poet not to use, particularly a soldier-poet.

In_flanders_field_poppy_thumb

We here at Doubtful Sea want to commemorate all of the soldiers on both sides in this posting and wish that the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 had seen the end of the war, instead of four years and millions of deaths later.

Christmas-Day-Truce

And we offer, as Tolkien fans, not only the poppy, but the Evermind, the Simbelmyne, in remembrance.

Processed by: Helicon Filter; simbelmyneflower

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

  • Ollamh

Categories

  • Artists and Illustrators
  • Economics in Middle-earth
  • Fairy Tales and Myths
  • Films and Music
  • Games
  • Heroes
  • Imaginary History
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Language
  • Literary History
  • Maps
  • Medieval Russia
  • Military History
  • Military History of Middle-earth
  • Narnia
  • Narrative Methods
  • Poetry
  • Research
  • Star Wars
  • Terra Australis
  • The Rohirrim
  • Theatre and Performance
  • Tolkien
  • Uncategorized
  • Villains
  • Writing as Collaborators
Follow doubtfulsea on WordPress.com

Across the Doubtful Sea

Recent Postings

  • In Bocca al Lupo August 10, 2022
  • Authentic Fiction August 3, 2022
  • To the Manor Born July 27, 2022
  • Through the Mill July 20, 2022
  • Obi:  Won? (Two) July 13, 2022
  • Obi:  Won? (One) July 6, 2022
  • Melkor/Morgoth/Melqart June 29, 2022
  • (Failed) Rewards and (No More) Fairies June 22, 2022
  • Stretching Back (II) June 15, 2022

Blog Statistics

  • 63,038 Views

Posting Archive

  • August 2022 (2)
  • July 2022 (4)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (4)
  • April 2022 (4)
  • March 2022 (5)
  • February 2022 (4)
  • January 2022 (4)
  • December 2021 (5)
  • November 2021 (4)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (4)
  • July 2021 (4)
  • June 2021 (5)
  • May 2021 (4)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (5)
  • February 2021 (4)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (4)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (5)
  • August 2020 (4)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (5)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (6)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (4)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (4)
  • August 2019 (4)
  • July 2019 (5)
  • June 2019 (4)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (4)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (4)
  • January 2019 (5)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (4)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • December 2017 (4)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (4)
  • September 2017 (4)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (5)
  • April 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (5)
  • October 2016 (6)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (5)
  • July 2016 (5)
  • June 2016 (5)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (5)
  • November 2015 (5)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (5)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (4)
  • January 2015 (4)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (6)
  • September 2014 (1)

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • doubtfulsea
    • Join 66 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • doubtfulsea
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...