The First Lord of the Rings Map - new discoveries in the East

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Another problem with trying to push the Beleriand thing too hard: Smaug was a winged, flying dragon, something which already in the Quenta Noldorinwa (contemporary with the start of The Hobbit) Tolkien had declared were never seen before the War of Wrath.

[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.

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.

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?

I hope this might provoke some thoughts.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Huinesoron]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

[Findegil]

D) I don’t belief in ‘Thangorodrim’. As far as I remember it is never used together with ‘Mountians’ by Tolkien. If we belief in ‘Mountain[s]’, I think we have to look for an English word. As in ‘Red Mts.’, ‘Blue Mts.’, ‘Yellow Mts.’, ‘Gray Mts’, ‘White Mts.’ or ‘Misty Moutians’. As we have on Ambrakanta Map IV the ‘Mts of the Wind’ in a slightly more southern position, could these mean ‘Thunderous Mountains’?

Respectfully
Findegil

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Mountains of Iron?

[Findegil]

The inked word between I and J: If it is not 'Sand' the it is verry similar. At lest we have 'S?n?' and the second sign is either 'a' or 'o'. So we would have 'Sona', 'Sono', 'Sano' or 'Sana'. But none of this does make any sense for me. So 'Sand' is very probable.

And now to G: I looked for any costline similarity and I found that when we turn the map up side down it showes some similarity to Ambrakanta Map V. We have an oval shape as the soruonding of the world, which looks like the shape of a compromise projection of modern map of our round world. In the lower part it is and Africa like shape with a kind of correction in on the eastern costline. In the north-west the costline shows the great gulf and farther north it looks like the Bay of Balar and the Beleriand cost running north-west. In the south-east we have something like India, farther east the cost is to far north, But the shape has a slight similarity to the costline of eat-asia.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Huinesoron]

Last night I pulled out my phone microscope and took some closeups of the map, to see if I could draw out any more details. I was all set to post them, but: I've found an absolutely huge scan of the whole thing online.

Via 'New Criterion'

Starting from the top, then:

A: something to do with distances. It's two sentences, the first of which looks like it reads:

Shire - should be 40 miles further west

The second is trickier, but definitely includes '50 miles'.

B: I'm less convinced that this says 'Neldoreth' now. It looks more like 'Nelo[n/u/v]eh'.

C: That's definitely a mountain range.

D: Is sadly not a name for said mountain range. The first line is 'This should be', and the second looks like it starts 'Mist'. One possibility is that C is an early sketch for the shape of the Misty Mountains, but the shape looks very wrong.

E: I think the line is clearly intended to separate C from the body of the map.

F: Very clear, except for Tolkien's handwriting. This might say:

*Isengard should be ____
up to Vale. 30 miles
__ __ __ to D.C. ____?

G: If the 'Isengard' reading for F is correct, then I think G is a sketch of the Vale of Isengard, ie Nan Curunir. It seems to match the shape of the valley on the main map, and shows a river running down from the north.

H: The only word I can make out on this is the last word of the third line from the end, which must be 'Nindalf'.

I: The last word of the first line is 'Anduin', and the lone word on the third line is 'Hills'. I think the second line might end with 'and omit [Proper Noun]', in which case this refers to a deleted feature. One possibility is the named hills on the Brown Lands, which seem to have been removed when the Rohan overlay was placed; their name ends with '-en', which could match this note.

I.2: 'Sand' or 'some' or 'sane'. Could be flippin' anything.

J: Appears to contain the words 'should be farther East'. I think the name 'Orodruin' may also show up? I'm not sure though.

It does look like these are very much working notes, not particularly new information. But it's still interesting, and missing from HoME! And unless someone can find a match for that mysterious mountain range, it could still exist...

hS