Thread: LotR - Prologue
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Old 07-20-2018, 07:11 AM   #128
Huinesoron
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Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
It's a nice thought, but Tolkien disagrees. From Of the Rings of Power...

Quote:
At Fornost upon the North Downs also the Númenóreans dwelt, and in Cardolan, and in the hills of Rhudaur; and towers they raised upon Emyn Beraid and upon Amon Sûl; and there remain many barrows and ruined works in those places, but the towers of Emyn Beraid still look towards the sea.

[...]

It is said that the towers of Emyn Beraid were not built indeed by the Exiles of Númenor, but were raised by Gil-galad for Elendil, his friend; and the Seeing Stone of Emyn Beraid was set in Elostirion, the tallest of the towers.
Curiously, that doesn't answer the purpose. The White Towers seem to have marked the western limits of Arnor, but if they were watchtowers then they were watching the people who built them! We know that one of the three was set up for the Stone, but what about the others?

I've found a possible answer over in Unfinished Tales, with a note to Aldarion and Erendis discussing the return of Numenoreans to Middle-earth:

Quote:
"It was six hundred years after the departure of the survivors of the Atani [Edain] over the sea to Númenor that a ship first came again out of the West to Middle-earth and passed up the Gulf of Lhûn. Its captain and mariners were welcomed by Gil-galad; and thus was begun the friendship and alliance of Númenor with the Eldar of Lindon. The news spread swiftly and Men in Eriador were filled with wonder. Although in the First Age they had dwelt in the East, rumours of the terrible war 'beyond the Western Mountains' [i.e. Ered Luin] had reached them; but their traditions preserved no clear account of it, and they believed that all the Men who dwelt in the lands beyond had been destroyed or drowned in great tumults of fire and inrushing seas. But since it was still said among them that those Men had in years beyond memory been kinsmen of their own, they sent messages to Gil-galad asking leave to meet the shipmen 'who had returned from death in the deeps of the Sea.' Thus it came about that there was a meeting between them on the Tower Hills; and to that meeting with the Númenóreans came twelve Men only out of Eriador, Men of high heart and courage, for most of their people feared that the newcomers were perilous spirits of the Dead. But when they looked on the shipmen fear left them, though for a while they stood silent in awe; for mighty as they were themselves accounted among their kin, the shipmen resembled rather Elvish lords than mortal Men in bearing and apparel. Nonetheless they felt no doubt of their ancient kinship; and likewise the shipmen looked with glad surprise upon the Men of Middle-earth, for it had been believed in Númenor that the Men left behind were descended from the evil Men who in the last days of the war against Morgoth had been summoned by him out of the East. But now they looked upon faces free from the Shadow and Men who could have walked in Númenor and not been thought aliens save in their clothes and their arms. Then suddenly, after the silence, both the Númenóreans and the Men of Eriador spoke words of welcome and greeting in their own tongues, as if addressing friends and kinsmen after a long parting. At first they were disappointed, for neither side could understand the other; but when they mingled in friendship they found that they shared very many words still clearly recognisable, and others that could be understood with attention, and they were able to converse haltingly about simple matters." Elsewhere in this essay it is explained that these Men dwelt about Lake Evendim, in the North Downs and the Weather Hills, and in the lands between as far as the Brandywine, west of which they often wandered though they did not dwell there.
The Tower Hills were a site of reunification; could it be that the Towers were raised partly in memory of that? If we think of Faramir's words at Henneth Annun - that before a meal they look west 'to Numenor that was, and Elvenhome that is, and that which is beyond Elvenhome and shall ever be' - then perhaps we can apply the same idea: three towers, one for the Men of the North, one for the Men of Numenor, and one for the Elves and Eressea. They would be monuments and places of thanksgiving and remembrance.

In fact, as the westernmost point in Arnor, they were also symbolically the closest point to the Hallows on the Meneltarma. If you think of the Jewish tradition of prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as the closest point to the temple, I can easily imagine the towers as the original way to look back on 'Numenor that was'.

(It might be interesting to compare this hypothesis with the Gondorian version, where they made a new hallows on their local highest mountain. Arnor looks west and to the past, Gondor faces east and south and thinks of the future... but that's getting a bit off topic. )

hS
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