Talk:Númenor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien and his legendarium. Please visit the project page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.
Assessment Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale. High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale. Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

Contents 1 Númenórean v. Númenorean 2 Contradiction 3 Long Life 4 Another "happy coincidence" ? 5 Page title 6 The Ban and the flat world

[edit] Númenórean v. Númenorean

Isn't the adjective form Númenórean rather than Númenorean? -Aranel ("Sarah") 16:49, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I looked it up. And yes, it is. (I checked both The Silmarillion for an early perspect and The Peoples of Middle-earth for a later perspective.) Númenórean is the adjective (or the noun referring to a person from Númenor) and Númenor is the noun. -Aranel ("Sarah") 17:20, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

Why is this page flagged as contradicting itself? -- betakate18:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Long Life

I've noticed that there is no mention of the Numenorians having long life.

In the books, I believe the Numernorians lved for hunreds of years, with one king reigning for 400. Argorn, a decendent of the Numenoreans lived to be 210. This section lacks any mention of the Numeorians long life or how they attained it. Was it part of the gift of Numenor?--Eldarone 01:13, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another "happy coincidence" ?

Just like Atalantë and Atlantis are similar, I think it worthy of mention that Númenor bears strong similarity to Latin numina and English word numinous. The story of Númenor -- a divinely created island of humanity, once glorious and now fallen -- is just the kind of numinous myth that Tolkien and C. S. Lewis would call "true myth." I'm sure I'm not the first person who noticed this; does anyone know a reference within "the Tolkien community" to point up this IMHO important fact? LandruBek 14:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The Atlantis connection was deliberate... Tolkien specifically stated it several times. I don't recall having heard the 'numina' theory before, but note that 'númen' means 'west' in Quenya. I'd have to check, but I believe that meaning of the root predates it's use in 'Númenor'. --CBDunkerson 14:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page title

the page title is "Númenore"; there is, however, no redirect for "Numenore". So when i type in "Numenore" i get nothing. the name of the page should either be changed or there should be a redirect for "Numenore" sorry to disrupt your thoughtfull discussion w/ something this trivial.

Done Bryan 19:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Ban and the flat world

If the world was flat during the time of Numenor, how far exactly would one have to sail until one would lose sight of anything? Wouldn't it have been possible to see as far from Numenor as one's eyesight allowed, maybe even up to Aman and Middle Earth, weather permitting and given sufficient visual acuity? What then are the exact terms of the Ban?

-- Thomas 15:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing in the available texts about how far east one might be able to see, but it's said in Appendix A of RotK that the keen-eyed could see the the tower of the havens on Tol Eressëa from the Meneltarma on Númenor. It is nowhere said for what cause one could see farther from a height on a flat earth, but I suppose we could guess that the thickness of the air at lower elevations, density of mist, spray, and water vapor upon the sea, have something to do with it. The difficulty of resolving very distant objects place practical limits on how far one could see regardless of elevation. This must have been important, since the Ban specifically forbade the Númenoreans from sailing so far west that they could no longer make out their own shores, or to attempt to set foot on the Undying Lands. TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, indeed, here's a quote from the Silmarilion, p. 313: "[...] only the keenest eyes among them [could see Avallónë] from the Meneltarma, maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as it was lawful for them to go." It would seem that either visibility at sea level is really bad or that the Meneltarma is really high. I'm finding this a somewhat weak point, though: surely there must be some very keen-eyed individuals or telescopy technology that would allow the Numenorians to have a quite good view of either the foreign or their own shores. -- Thomas 00:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think visibility at sea level is never great. Not as good as you get at high elevations in dry, dust-free conditions anyway. And remember there are the Enchanted Isles between Númenor and Eressëa, where it was sufficiently misty that it would have almost certainly have obscured the view.

But it probably was a weak point. I don't know that Tolkien ever thought completely through the consequences of a flat earth. He had conceived it mythologically, and only began to worry about practical consequences later when he decided that he was writing (at least partly) a feigned history instead -- and at that point he considered abandoning the idea of a historical flat earth entirely. TCC (talk) (contribs) 04:10, 30 December 2006 (UTC)