On 15 November 1937 Tolkien submitted the unfinished manuscript of the *Quenta Silmarillion to George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers). In the following month, while the work was being considered, he leaped ahead in it and wrote an account of the end of the First Age which includes information relevant to the story of Númenor. Eärendel now has two sons who are allowed by Manwë to choose freely whether to be accounted among the immortal Elves or mortal Mankind. One son, Elrond, chooses to be of Elf-kind but remains in Middle-earth rather than accompany the Elves returning into the West; but the other, Elros, chooses the fate of Men. At some time after this, in an amanuensis typescript of the second version of The Fall of Númenor, Tolkien substituted Elros for Elrond as the first king of that realm.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Further developments in the Númenor story occurred intermittently during the writing of The Lord of the Rings as it began to play an increasingly important role in the internal history of that work, and finally as an essential strand. Tolkien began to write The Lord of the Rings in December 1937, but it was some time before he developed the Necromancer of The Hobbit into the maker of the One Ring – Sauron, the servant of Melkor in the First Age, who was responsible for the destruction of Númenor near the end of the Second. It was not until late summer and early autumn 1938 that relevant allusions began to appear in the text: Trotter (the precursor of Aragorn) remarks of land the company is passing through that evil people once lived there, who ‘came under the sway of the Dark Lord. It is said that they were overthrown by Elendil, as King of Western Men, who aided Gilgalad, when they made war on the Dark Lord’ (*The Return of the Shadow, pp. 192–3). The idea emerged that Bilbo’s ring is more powerful than other rings, and that it was ‘taken from the Lord [Sauron] himself when Gilgalad wrestled with him, and taken by a flying Elf’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 226). The ‘flying Elf’ was soon replaced by Isildur, son of Elendil, who cuts the One Ring from Sauron’s hand but then loses it in the river Anduin when he is attacked. Tolkien also considered making the Rangers ‘the last remnant of the kingly people from beyond the Seas’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 331).

In autumn 1939 the Númenórean realms in exile began to emerge with the mention of Ond (later Ondor > Gondor) in early versions of the Council of Elrond (bk. II, ch. 2). Trotter becomes a man rather than a hobbit, described in Gandalf’s letter to Frodo as ‘Aragorn son of Celegorn, of the line of Isildur Elendil’s son’ (*The Treason of Isengard, p. 50). Eventually Aragorn becomes the last descendant of Elendil and the rightful heir to the realms Elendil founded. Tolkien tried out several ideas for the establishment and early history of these realms before he was satisfied. The story that eventually emerged was that Elendil the Tall and his sons Isildur and Anárion sailed first to the North, where they were befriended by Gilgalad and Elendil established the kingdom of Arnor. His sons then sailed south and founded the realm of Gondor, close to Mordor. When Sauron attacks and takes Isildur’s city, Minas Ithil, Isildur joins his father in the North, and Elendil and Gilgalad form the Last Alliance against Sauron.

THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS AND THE DROWNING OF ANADÛNÊ

During Christmas vacation 1945 and the first half of 1946, with The Lord of the Rings still unfinished, Tolkien began to transform some of the material from The Lost Road into a new work, The Notion Club Papers, again involving time-travel and the final days of Númenor. As part of this work he also wrote *The Drowning of Anadûnê, a new account of The Fall of Númenor. Apparently it was only after completing the first part of The Notion Club Papers that he decided that the second part should deal with Númenor, writing a note: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga’ (*Sauron Defeated, p. 281).

In the second part of The Notion Club Papers, two members of the titular society, Alwin Arundel Lowdham and Wilfrid Trewyn Jeremy, evidently having inherited memories from remote ancestors, have experiences like those of Alboin Errol in The Lost Road. Both are stirred by the name Éarendel, both dream of hearing fragments of strange languages (Quenya and Sindarin) or of seeing manuscripts written in strange scripts, and report these at meetings of the Club. Lowdham remembers that his father kept a diary in a strange script, and that after his father’s disappearance in his boat Éarendel Star he found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. During one meeting, a thunderstorm rages outside, and both Lowdham and Jeremy seem to have a vision of, or to experience, the destruction of Númenor. They cry out:

The ships have set sail at last …. Behold, the mountain smokes and the earth trembles! … Woe to this time and the fell counsels of Sauron! Tarkalion hath set forth his might against the Lords of the West …. The Lords have spoken to the Maker … and the fate of the world is overturned …. The ships of the Númenóreans are drowned in the abyss. They are lost for ever. See now the eagles of the Lords overshadow Númenor. The mountain goes up to heaven in flame and vapour; the hills totter, slide, and crumble: the land founders. The glory has gone down into the deep waters. [p. 251, emended from notes 63–4, p. 290]

Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’. Both rush into the freak storm and do not return for some months. Then they begin to tell of their travels round the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and of a shared dream in which they were in tenth-century England, Lowdham as the minstrel Ælfwine, Jeremy as Tréowine from the Marches.

Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers with this account only partly told. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Road, see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘at the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).

In association with The Notion Club Papers Tolkien wrote a new account of the fall of Númenor, The Drowning of Anadûnê. This differs significantly from The Fall of Númenor, which had ended with the words: ‘And here endeth the tale of the ancient world as it is known to the Elves’ (The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 29). There is no reason to doubt that when Tolkien wrote those words he intended that the Elves’ knowledge of the world and its history, deriving from the Valar and their own experiences, should reflect what actually occurred. Nothing is said about if, and how, this Elvish tradition was passed on to Men. The Drowning of Anadûnê is intended to show how events in the First Age and the history of Númenor might have been remembered in the traditions of Men after being passed down through many generations: filtered, changed, distorted, and with much forgotten. But this was also a time when Tolkien began to doubt whether he should include in his mythology elements contrary to scientific knowledge, such as a flat world made round, and considered whether to make fundamental changes, or alternatively, changes in perception and knowledge, even writing a version of the *Ainulindalë in which the world was round from Creation. In The Fall of Númenor a flat world is made round at the time of the Downfall, but in The Drowning of Anadûnê the world was always round.

Tolkien made three rough preliminary sketches before beginning The Drowning of Anadûnê, then produced four successive typescripts. There are considerable differences in the story told in these texts, and Christopher Tolkien concludes ‘that the marked differences in the preliminary sketches reflect my father’s shifting ideas of what the “Mannish tradition” might be, and how to present it; he was sketching rapidly possible modes in which the memory, and the forgetfulness, of Men in Middle-earth, descendants of the Exiles of Númenor, might have transformed their early history’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 407). If one assumes that the Elvish traditions of events in the First Age recounted in the Quenta Silmarillion, the *Annals of Beleriand, and The Fall of Númenor record what actually happened, then it is clear that these versions of ‘Mannish tradition’ preserve only faint and erroneous memories of events. They are particularly confused about the Valar and the Elves, sometimes making no distinction between them, and uncertain about their dwelling places in the West.

In the preliminary sketches and in The Drowning of Anadûnê Tolkien pays much attention to what the Númenóreans thought or were told about the shape of the world. Although he made no authorial statement on this matter, a careful study of internal evidence suggests that this world was round from the beginning. In the first sketch the Númenóreans ‘believe the world flat, and that “the Lords of the West” (Gods) dwell beyond the great barrier of cloud hills – where there is no death and the Sun is renewed and passes under the world to rise again’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 400), but are told by the Elves that the world is round. By emendations it is Sauron, not the Elves, who tells the Númenóreans that the world is round, but in the third sketch (in a section later struck through) ‘the ancient Númenóreans knew (being taught by the Eledāi [= Elves]) that the Earth was round; but Sauron taught them that it was a disc and flat …’ (p. 404). In the first version of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Avalāi (= confused mixing of the Valar and the Elves), who live in Avallondē, tell the Númenóreans that the world is round ‘and that if they sailed into the utmost West, yet would they but come back again to the East and so to the places of their setting out, and the world would seem to them but a prison’ (p. 345); while Sauron ‘bade them think that the world was not a closed circle; and that therein there were many lands for their winning …; and even yet, when they came to the end thereof, there was the Dark without, out of which came all things’ (p. 347). A note written beside the text says that after the disaster, the Númenóreans continued to believe Sauron’s lies that the world was flat until their fleets, seeking for the remains of Númenor, sailed around the world. In the second and later versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Valar send messengers to the last king (now called Ar-Pharazôn) and tell him that ‘the fashion of the Earth is such that a girdle may be set about it. Or as an apple … it is round and fair, and the seas and lands are but the rind of the fruit …’ (p. 364). But Zigûr (= Sauron) refutes this with similar words as in the first version. There is no reference in any of the texts to the Númenóreans seeing the Gates of Morning, as there was in The Fall of Númenor.

The sketches refer only briefly to the cataclysm that destroyed Númenor and its aftermath. In various texts of The Drowning of Anadûnê men do not know exactly what happened, for there were no surviving human witnesses of anything but the destruction of Númenor itself. In the first version, ‘those that are wisest in discernment aver’ that when the Númenórean fleets sail into the West the Avalāi (= Valar) ‘laid down their governance of Earth. And Eru overthrew its shape, and a great chasm was opened in the sea’ into which the fleets fall, and Avallondē and Númenor are destroyed, ‘and the Avalāi thereafter had no local habitation on earth …’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 351). The second version says that men later heard from the Nimri (= Elves) that Eru ‘changed the fashion of the world; and a great chasm opened in the sea between Anadûnê and the Deathless Land [= Aman, the home of the Valar] … and the world was shaken’. The Númenórean fleet fell into the abyss, and Aman and Númenor which stood on either side of it were destroyed (pp. 372–3).

In neither version is there any suggestion that the world was ever anything but round, nor is there any mention of a Straight Road. But in both the Númenóreans think that some blessed with a special sight might be able to see, in some fashion, the lands that once had been, and they comment that all the ways are crooked that once were straight (pp. 352, 374). In the third version, Tolkien made an addition to explain this:

For in the youth of the world it was a hard saying to men that the Earth was not plain [flat] as it seemed to be, and few even of the Faithful of Anadûnê had believed in their hearts this teaching; and when in after days, what by star-craft, what by the voyages of ships that sought out all the ways and waters of the Earth, the Kings of Men knew that the world was indeed round, then the belief arose among them that it had so been made only in the time of the great Downfall, and was not thus before. Therefore they thought that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the Earth went on towards heaven …. [p. 392]

There were rumours of mariners who found this road and reached the Land of Aman. Christopher Tolkien points out that whereas ‘the author of The Fall of Númenor knows that “of old many of the exiles of Númenor could still see, some clearly, and some more faintly, the paths to the True West”, but for the rationalising author (as he may seem to be) of The Drowning of Anadûnê the Straight Road was a belief born of desire and regret’ (p. 395).

In emendations made at this time to the latest version of The Fall of Númenor (a fine manuscript written in the early 1940s), and in the sketches and especially successive versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê, Tolkien added a great deal of information about Númenor and its history, much of which survived into the Akallabêth and The Lord of the Rings and was evidently not intended to represent distorted later tradition. Among its more significant features is a strengthening of the ban against the Númenóreans sailing west: they are now forbidden to sail out of sight of the west coast of Númenor. In early years they offer first-fruits to Ilúvatar on the mountain in the centre of Númenor, the Pillar of Heaven; and they visit Middle-earth, where they teach the men they find there language, agriculture, and crafts, and to reject the rule of the followers of Morgoth.

But even before they are corrupted by Sauron, the Númenóreans begin to resent their mortality and murmur against the Valar. Ar-Pharazôn, the last king, no longer invites Sauron to Númenor but takes a great army to Middle-earth and demands that Sauron pay him homage. Sauron feigns submission, and is taken back to Númenor as a hostage, where he soon gains ascendancy over the king. Most Númenóreans cease to honour Ilúvatar, and instead human sacrifices, often of those who were faithful to the old ways, are offered to Morgoth in the temple built by Sauron. Those who sail east to Middle-earth now do so as cruel conquerors and enslavers. Among the Faithful are Amardil, his son Elendil, and Elendil’s sons Anárion and Isildur, who are descended from Earendil through a junior line. In despair at the king’s plans to invade Valinor, Amardil decides to follow the example of Earendil and sail into the West to seek aid of the Valar. He is never seen again. The eruption of the Pillar of Heaven, which is volcanic, contributes to the destruction of Númenor, which slides into the sea and is overwhelmed by gigantic waves. The ships of Elendil are driven east by the winds and carried on great waves to Middle-earth.

Tolkien evidently had clear pictures in his mind of events in the latter part of The Drowning of Anadûnê, which he transformed into passages of brilliant and memorable descriptive writing:

And now the fleets of the Adûnâi [Númenóreans] darkened the sea upon the west of the land, and they were like an archipelago of a thousand isles; their masts were as a forest upon the mountains, and their sails were like a brooding cloud; and their banners were black and golden like stars upon the fields of night. And all things now waited upon the word of Ar-Pharazôn; and Zigûr withdrew into the inmost circle of the Temple, and men brought him victims to be burned. Then the Eagles of the Lords of the West came up out of the dayfall, and they were arrayed as for battle, advancing in a line the end of which could not be seen. [etc.; p. 371, as emended from p. 391]

In the first version, the Númenóreans abandon their own language and adopt that of the Avalāi (Elvish). In the second version, most Númenóreans continue to speak their own Mannish tongue, Adûnaic, and only kings and princes learned the Elvish language. In the last two versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê, most of the names are in Adûnaic.

THE AKALLABÊTH AND APPENDICES A AND B TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Probably in the autumn of 1948, while working on material to be published in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote yet another account of the fall of Númenor, entitled The Downfall of Númenor, but always referred to it as the Akallabêth. In writing this work, he drew on both The Fall of Númenor and The Drowning of Anadûnê. He evidently intended it not for The Lord of the Rings, but for inclusion in a published ‘Silmarillion’. Neither The Fall of Númenor nor The Drowning of Anadûnê, however, suited that purpose. The Fall of Númenor is less than half the length of The Drowning of Anadûnê, which includes much fine description and new matter not found in the earlier account. But the parts of The Drowning of Anadûnê in which confused later ‘Mannish tradition’ is predominant made it unsuitable to accompany the other ‘Silmarillion’ texts derived from ‘true’ Elvish traditions.

Apparently influenced by the preference his friend *Katharine Farrer expressed in the autumn of 1948 for the ‘Flat World’ version of the Ainulindalë over the ‘Round World’ version, Tolkien, for a time at least, seems to have decided to retain the cosmology of the world being originally flat as it was in The Fall of Númenor. In addition, some new material needed to be added to the story of Númenor to take account of various matters introduced in The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien thinks that a note his father wrote many years later explains how he regarded the different accounts: The Fall of Númenor relates ‘Elvish tradition’, The Drowning of Anadûnê ‘Mannish tradition’, and the Akallabêth, which draws on both of the others, ‘Mixed Dúnedanic tradition’ (Sauron Defeated, pp. 406–7).

Before starting work on the Akallabêth Tolkien made an outline history of Númenor with rough dates for the thirteen kings (most not named) who followed after the death of Elros in Second Age 460, and for some significant events (e.g. the fourteenth and last king, Tarkalion or Arpharazôn, challenges Sauron in Second Age 3125, and the Downfall of Númenor takes place in 3319). The first text, a manuscript, is addressed to Ælfwine, presumably by Pengoloð, an Elf of Tol Eressëa, and begins with two new paragraphs summarizing the Elvish tradition of the coming of Men into the world, their falling under the dominion of Morgoth, the repentance of the Edain who fought with the Eldar against Morgoth, and the voyage of Eärendil into the West to speak to the Valar on behalf of Elves and Men. The text then briefly follows the third version of The Fall of Númenor for an account of the defeat of Morgoth, the summoning of the Elves into the West to the Isle of Eressëa whose haven was Avallónë, and the creation of Númenor for Men.

From that point the Akallabêth follows mainly The Drowning of Anadûnê, but takes or revises some passages from The Fall of Númenor. The language spoken by most of the Númenóreans is still Adûnaic, but most names are in the Elvish languages (*Languages, Invented), either that which their kings and lords had learned during their alliance with the Elves (here called Noldorin) or the High Eldarin tongue (Quenya) which their lore-masters learn. The Númenóreans are forbidden by the Valar to sail west out of sight of the shores of Númenor, but they know that Eressëa lies to the west, and beyond that is the Blessed Realm. The Eldar from Eressëa visit and bring gifts, including a seedling of the White Tree of Eressëa, itself a seedling of Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor. The seedling is planted in the courts of the king. The Númenórean mariners again see the Gates of Morning in the East. The Númenóreans’ resentment of their mortality begins earlier, and it is to Tar-Atanamir, the seventh king, that the Valar send messengers, who now say nothing about the shape of the world but tell him that even if he came to Aman it would not profit him. ‘For it is not the land of Manwë that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell therein have hallowed the land; and there you would but wither and grow weary the sooner’ (The Silmarillion, p. 264).

More detail is given of the growing obsession of the Númenóreans with death, building great tombs, and seeking to prolong life, but discovering only how to preserve bodies of the dead. Most cease to show any devotion to Eru. Even before Sauron comes to power, they make settlements in Middle-earth, mainly in the south, and instead of teaching and helping those living there, they seek wealth and dominion. The Faithful sail mainly to the North-west, establish a haven at Pelargir, and help Gil-galad against Sauron. Some of this, and much else of the added material, derived from The Lord of the Rings. In the Akallabêth it is during the reign of Tar-Atanamir that Sauron completes the building of Barad-dûr and begins his campaign for domination of Middle-earth. He is said to hate the Númenóreans because they aided Gil-galad against him. Three of the nine Men whom Sauron snares with rings are great lords of Númenórean race, and he uses them (the Ringwraiths) to attack Númenórean strongholds by the sea. When he comes to Númenor, Sauron urges the king to cut down the White Tree growing in his courts, but before the king consents, Isildur manages to steal a fruit, and the sapling grown from this fruit and the Seven Stones given to them by the Eldar are included in the treasure the Faithful put aboard their ships (cf. the rhyme in The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 11). Sauron says nothing about the shape of the world except that many lands lie east and west. As in The Fall of Númenor, when the fashion of the world is changed Aman is not destroyed, and Aman and Eressëa are ‘taken away and removed from the circles of the world beyond the reach of Men for ever’ (*The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 157). Although it is not stated in the account of the actual Downfall in what way the fashion of the world is changed, other than that new lands and seas are made, it is implied in the later statement ‘in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallónë, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it’ (The Silmarillion, p. 281).

Probably in 1951 Tolkien took up a typescript he had made from the manuscript of the Akallabêth and emended it, altering some names and the sequence of certain events, rewriting a few passages, and adding a lengthy rider giving much more detail of the history of the last Númenórean kings, and in particular their growing hostility to the Eldar and the Valar and to those who remained faithful. The White Tree is no longer a descendant of Telperion, but of a memorial of that tree given to the Elves of Túna. Messengers from the Valar still come to Tar-Atanamir, but he is now the thirteenth king. The nineteenth king chooses a name in Adûnaic rather than in the Elven-tongue – Adûnakhor, Lord of the West – a title belonging to the Valar, and forbids the use of the Elven-tongues in his hearing. Emphasis is laid the status of the Lords of Andúnië descended from Silmarien, the daughter of the fourth king, who, as his eldest child, would have been queen according to a rule of succession introduced later – thus stressing the royal descent of Amandil and his son Elendil, and ultimately of Aragorn. Although the Lords of Andúnië are loyal to the kings, they hold to the old ways and try to protect the Faithful. The twenty-second king forbids the use of the Elven-tongues and any contact with the Eldar of Eressëa, but his wife is a close relative of the Lords of Andúnië and herself one of the Faithful. Their elder son, influenced by his mother, repents, takes the elven name Tar-Palantir, and again pays reverence to Eru. On his death, his daughter Míriel should become queen, but her cousin forces her to marry him and usurps the sceptre for himself, taking the name Ar-Pharazôn and becoming the twenty-fourth ruler. He persecutes the Faithful and seeks homage from Sauron.

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