As always, dear readers, welcome.

The first part of this posting began as far from Middle-earth and its history as possible:  the Biblical lands of our Middle-earth and the story of the ancient prophet, Daniel and specifically the event which gained Daniel his position in the court first of Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, and then in that of his conqueror/successor, Darius the Persian.  Uniquely for early prophecy, Belshazzar hadn’t been warned that he would be deposed by any of the accepted means—the reading of the flight of birds

or the reading of animal intestines, for example,

(This is a bit of Etruscology, being a bronze model of a sheep’s liver believed to be used as a guide to interpreting what an Etruscan priest might find on an actual sheep’s liver.  For more, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex )

but by a message written by a detached hand on an interior wall of his palace.

(Rembrandt—as I said in the first part of this posting, having no idea of what real Babylonians looked like, the artist went for the Magi look)

When Belshazzar’s own scribes and prophets could make nothing of it, Daniel was brought in as a consultant and delivered the grim message that the words—which were potentially chillingly ambiguous—signalled not only the end of Belshazzar’s reign, but of his kingdom.  (For more on this, see:  https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/11/andrew-wilson-spirited-life-daniel-writing-on-wall-babylon/   For a wonderful 12^th-century version of the story and a little on Daniel’s experience in the court of Darius, see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djf0DFkH7mA&list=RDDjf0DFkH7mA&start_radio=1 )

In that posting, I suggested that Daniel’s story not only confirmed his role as prophet, but, for the posting, that he was literate, which would have marked him out in a world in which literacy was a specialized skill, like being a boatwright.

(This is from one of my favorite medieval mosaics, the story of Noah and the Ark from the cathedral of Monreale in Palermo—for more see:  https://www.christianiconography.info/sicily/noahBuildsArkMonreale.html )

This, in turn, had led to considering literacy in Middle-earth, chiefly among hobbits, and, in particular, the literacy of one rather unlikely hobbit, Sam Gamgee.

(Robert Chronister)

For more on this, see that earlier posting, “It’s in Writing (1)” 15 October, 2025, but my conclusion, based upon the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings, “The Grey Havens”, was that, as the story of Daniel makes Daniel literate in order to elevate him to a level of prophetic importance, so JRRT makes Sam literate in order to allow him to be the author who will complete the story of the Ring.  

That posting briefly examined hobbits and even suggested some evidence of literacy among dwarves, but it was never meant to be a full inventory of mentions of literacy in Middle-earth—although I think that that would be a very interesting project and well worth doing—and one thing it omitted entirely was any mention of literacy in Mordor. 

Did Orcs read and write, for example?

(Alan Lee)

Considering the conversation of people like Ugluk and Grishnakh, it would seem that they were mainly oral, as much of their and other talk is based upon what they hear, rather than read. (“ ‘What are they wanted for?’ asked several voices.  ‘Why alive?  Do they give good sport?’ ‘No!  I heard that one of them has got something, something that’s wanted for the war…”  The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”—for more on Orcs and gossip, among other things, see “Scuttlebutt”, 27 October, 2021)

And yet there’s this:

“The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn like the great stone kings of Argonath.  The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it..Upon its knees were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.”  (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 7, Journey to the Cross-roads”)

The “maggot-folk of Mordor” must certainly be the Orcs and “idle scrawls” suggests graffiti, like the World War 2-era favorite–

(For more on orcs and graffiti, see “Ugluk was Here”, 14 December, 2016—for more on Kilroy see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here )

So what did they write in?  Pippin, while a prisoner of the Orcs, notices that they seem to speak different languages—or at least dialects—but employ the Common Speech to understand each other:

“To Pippin’s surprise he found that much of the talk was intelligible; many of the Orcs were using ordinary language.  Apparently the members of two or three quite different tribes were present, and they could not understand one another’s orc-speech.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”)

Can we presume, then, that the “idle scrawls” were in the writing system called the Tengwar, as “[its letters] had spread over much of the same area as that in which the Common Speech was known” (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E, II, “Writing”)?  Or possibly the runic Cirith, as “[it] became known to many peoples, to Men and Dwarves, and even to Orcs, all of whom altered it to suit their purposes and according to their skill or lack of it.”

But what about the Black Speech?

“It is said that the Black Speech was devised by Sauron in the Dark Years, and that he had desired to make it the language of all those that served him…”

however—

“…after the first overthrow of Sauron this language in its ancient form was forgotten by all but the Nazgul.  When Sauron arose again, it became once more the language of Barad-dur and of the captains of Mordor.”

It was the formal language of the top of the chain of command, then, but, as JRRT had written earlier of Sauron’s first attempt to make it the official language, “he failed in that purpose” and the Orcs picked and chose what they found useful and nothing more.  (See The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F, “Of the Other Races”)

Save for what might be the Black Speech in a curse (“Ugluk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob bubhosh skai”, says one menacing Orc to Pippin– The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”), when we hear it, it’s Gandalf, reciting what he read when he “set the golden thing in the fire a while” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”). 

And this brings us back to reading and writing.  Why was there writing on that particular ring? 

Not being a party to its maker’s mind, this is only my guess, but I think that it may have had several possible purposes.

First—and this seems the most obvious—comes from something Gandalf says, repeating a remark made by Saruman:

“ ‘The Nine, the Seven, and the Three…had each their proper gem.  Not so the One.  It was round and unadorned, as it were one of the lesser rings; but its maker set marks upon it that the skilled, maybe, could still see and read.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”). 

Thus, Sauron had written on it to distinguish it from the other rings—and this writing was seemingly to be seen only by Sauron, as Isildur suggests:

“It was hot when I first took it, hot as a glede [a hot coal], and my hand was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it.  Yet even as I write it is cooled, and it seemeth to shrink, though it loseth neither its beauty nor its shape.  Already the writing upon it, which at first was as clear as red flames, fadeth and is only barely to be read.”

Isildur’s explanation for this fading was:

“The Ring misseth, maybe, the heat of Sauron’s hand, which was black and yet burned like fire.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”). 

The second purpose, then, might be that The Ring mirrored, in a way, its master, the inscription legible to him because it took its heat from his hand and, with that removed, it cooled, eventually, into silence.  Isildur had guessed that heat might revive it (“…maybe were the gold made hot again, the writing would be refreshed”) but it was Gandalf, having read Isildur’s suggestion, who did, by placing it into an environment like to its original.  That it would lose that inscription if the Ring were removed from its owner’s hand might also suggest a third purpose, which lies in what the writing actually said:

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Although Gandalf says that this formed part of “a verse long known in Elven-lore”, the Ring itself was meant to be the master ring:

“He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others.”

Thus, though it may have been part of a “verse long known in Elven-lore”, it sounds to me like a kind of spell Sauron would have chanted as he made the Ring, not only putting “a great part of his own former power” into it, but binding the lesser rings to it, as the words written on the Ring may have eventually been part of later tradition, but, logically, must have been his words long before they became part of that tradition.

These might have been Sauron’s purposes, but they also serve the narrative.  As Bilbo’s ring, passed down traumatically to Frodo, is “round and unadorned”, Gandalf has to have some way to prove to himself and to Frodo that this ring is the Ring.

(Alan Lee)

When Gandalf begins explaining to Frodo in detail about it and about Bilbo’s connection to it, he first mentions that

“A mortal…who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness.”

and Bilbo, says Gandalf, “…was getting restless and uneasy.  Thin and Stretched, he said.”

He speaks further about his worries about Bilbo and then tells Frodo that “There is a last test to make”, meaning in his confirmation that this is the Ring.

That last test takes place when, reluctantly, Frodo hands the Ring to Gandalf, and Gandalf throws it into the fire on Frodo’s hearth, where, when Frodo picks it up, he spots “fine lines, finer than the finest pen-strokes, running along the ring, outside and inside:  lines of fire that seemed to form the letters of a flowing script” and that script says:

“Ash nazg burbatuluk, ash nasz gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatuk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.”

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.”  (translation by Gandalf—earlier quotations from The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”, the Black Speech from Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”  For more on the Black Speech, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Speech )

For Gandalf, that inscription is the final element in his understanding of just what, long ago, Bilbo picked up in the tunnels under the Misty Mountains.  He explains that it’s “only two lines of a verse long known in Elven-lore”, but those two lines are apparently all that’s necessary.

But where might the idea for an inscription have come to JRRT from originally?  I have no proof, but, as a medievalist, Tolkien might have been aware of what we find in medieval bling and is later picked up in Hamlet.

If you, like me, are a Shakespeare fan, you may recognize the subtitle of this posting as a sharp little remark by Hamlet in Act III, Scene 2 (you can read it here in the First Quarto of 1603:      https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q1/complete/index.html ).  Hamlet is making fun of a very brief prologue before The Murder of Gonzago, the “play within a play” (renamed “The Mousetrap” by Hamlet) by which he hopes to force his uncle, Claudius, to reveal his guilt in the death of Hamlet’s father, but it’s the second half of that line, “a Poesie for a Ring” which provides an answer to my question.

What Hamlet is suggesting is that the prologue is as clumsy as the poetry found within a ring (although occasionally on the outside) usually given by one lover to another in the late medieval era at least into the 18^th century, like this one—

where inside is written “When this you see, remember me.”

(For more, see:  https://web.archive.org/web/20080611125813/http://www.wartski.com/Posy%20ring%20messages.htm )

Often called “posy rings” (a contracted form of “poesie”, as in the Shakespeare quotation), there are hundreds of surviving examples—here are only a small number from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford—

The texts vary, from what appears confident–“In thee my choice I do rejoice”—to the less so:  “I live in Hope”, but the general purpose of these little gifts is clear, if less sinister than Sauron’s.  They are meant to remind someone that someone else is thinking of them.  The difference, however, is that, if there’s one thing you wouldn’t want, it would be to have the Eye of Sauron looking in your direction.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Stay well,

Consider what Orcs might write on their rings,

(Alan Lee)

And remember that, as ever, there’s

MTCIDC

O

PS

For a little more on posy rings, see the monograph by John Evans, “Posy-Rings” (1892) at https://ia800704.us.archive.org/5/items/PosyRingsEvans/evans-j-posy-1892-00011597.pdf