Contradictory Descriptions of the Black Gate.

[JeffF.]

I've long wondered at the contradictory descriptions of the Black Gate between the Two Towers and Return of the King. In the Two Towers on the first page of the chapter the Black Gate is Closed it plainly says that there was a single iron gate in the stone rampart that Sauron had built across the pass but in Return of the King, The Black Gate Opens (p.200 of the Ballantine paperback) it states that there were three vast doors under frowning arches and on page 206 it again refers to 'doors' as the host ten times and more than ten times the size of Aragorn's force issues from them.

When I first noticed this WAAAY back in college my architecture major roommate pointed out the weakness in my theory that the single iron gate might have had three doors as components (one left door, one right door that opened left and right respectively and a center door between them that hinged upwards like a reverse drawbridge). He pointed out that the book states that each door was under its own arch and that the purpose of arches are to distribute weight on both legs of the arch so that a weight bearing column must be under each of the two legs of every arch and therefore they would not have been components of a single gate.

I'm hoping that someone here can provide a better explanation and description that reconciles and/or integrates the 'single iron gate' and 'three vast doors' descriptions.

[The Mouth of Sauron]

Sauron rebuilt the gates in the time period between the chapters ?

[Hakon]

My guess is there are three doors total, more like three gates. I think in the Two Towers it was referring to the outermost gate/door.

[radagastly]

Can't it have been a single large gate with three posterns? I always pictured a double-door type gate that meets in the center, with a postern (people-sized door) near each hinge, and a third near the center, cut into one or the other of the two halves.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

However, it might have been a compound arch- a very typical feature of large medieval buildings. In other words, three individual gate-arches within one overall arch: the smaller arches support the weight of the infill underneath the main arch, a "relieving arch," which sustains the weight of the wall above.

A two-opening example (windows, not doors):

http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/25630...drewmutton.jpg

[narfforc]

Cirith Gorgor was the pass into Mordor that the Morannon was built across. The Two Towers of the Teeth were on either side and The Black Gate Admidmost. I have 66 copies of The Lord of the Rings, I will have to check every copy at somestage. However having checked the second edition (the oldest I have), and two others (Unwin Books 74 and the 50th edition Harper Collins), they state that there are TWO vast doors. I have both the Ballantine and Ace copies, and they state THREE vast doors. Robert Foster's Guide states THREE doors also, so something is plainly wrong.


P.S I have just read on and seen a bit of editing going on. The Second Edition and the Unwin book states that The Mouth of Sauron comes from the middle door "And thereupon the middle door of the Black Gate was thrown open with a great clang". This changes in the 50th Edition Harper Collins to "And thereupon the door of the Black Gate was thrown open with a great clang". The Ace and Balantine copies go with the first statement.