Quote:
Originally Posted by Findegil
Coming back to the lables on the Map:
B): I agree that this might read ‘Neldoreth’. Sindarin ‘neldor’ means ‘three-tree’ and was brodend in use from the special beech ‘Hirilorn’ as a name for all beech trees. So ‘Neldoreth’ means ‘beech-forest’. So we know what trees we might expact there. It shows as well that the name was given after the Elves had have seen the Hirilorn in Beleriand. So it might have been applied in a kind of backward refelction, since the Elves had come along that forest and after settling in Doriath might have remembered the forest in the east with the same kind of trees.
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This is beautiful.
Given the ephemeral nature of these notes, it can't be considered canon-canon - but as Tolkien's only known thoughts on the forest, it should probably be held as 'true' under most systems anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Findegil
D) I think we can confirm that this is the name of the Mountains. The lable is clearly in 2 lines and the first charachter in the second line is nearly for sure a capital ‘M’. The second bow of the ‘M’ is smaller, but that is a feature of Tolkiens handscript found as well elsewhere on the same map (e.g. the ‘M’ in ‘NO MANS LAND’). In addition we have just at the beginning of the tape that seems to cover part of the word a line reaching above the tape. Supposedly that is the upper stroke of a ‘t’. Even so I can not make out much about the charachters between the ‘M’ and the souposed ‘t’, beside that they are lower case with out any upper stroke, the disntace fits for ‘oun’. So I think it is a good gues that the second line of the lable reads ‘Mountains’.
The first line is much harder since we have no idea what it might mean. It seems to be a long word. And my best guess for the first characters is ‘Th’. Near to the end of the long word we have a charchter with an upper stroke. That one says ‘d’ to me, so that is a pure guess.
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This is my best read of the visible lines:
Now that you say it, I definitely agree on 'Mountain[s]'. As for the first word...
Could it be 'Thangorodrim'? It would fit the theme of reusing Silm words, and the final letter does look like an m. The letter after Th also looks close to an a, and the semi-closed loop a little after it could be the top of a g (it has some pretty firm lines in it). The lines above would have to be artefacts or pencil blots, but that's entirely plausible.
And the name would make sense, from a Silm-pilfering perspective: it means 'Mountains of Tyranny', which fits for the borders of Sauron's greater empire. And, well, I can't think of any
other 'Th[long word]' mountain ranges.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Findegil
J) One feature of interest here is that this note starts with an asterix (*). Normaly I would hope to find a nother asterix somewhere on the map, but so far I could not find it. Has anybody else an idea where the reference for that note might be?
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I don't remember seeing one on the map as scanned... I'll have a look tonight. But much of the region to the west has been pasted over, so any corresponding asterisk has likely been obliterated. [Edit: I couldn't find one.]
A thought: there's one inked word between I and J - does it say 'sand', with the stick of the d hidden under the gridline? Again, I'm not sure that's information we've had about Rhun before.
hS