Ar-Pharazôn

Research Notes: Ar-Pharazôn — The Last King of Númenor Who Chose to Invade Heaven

Source availability: ABUNDANT. The full text of the Akallabêth was consulted directly, as
were The Lord of the Rings Appendices A and B, Unfinished Tales ("A Description of the Island
of Númenor," "The Line of Elros"), The Peoples of Middle-earth XII ("The History of the
Akallabêth," including the unpublished Míriel/Elentir drafts), and Sauron Defeated IX ("The
Drowning of Anadûnê"). Eight distinct analytical themes are supportable with 3+ hard specifics
each. There is no need to declare an under-band topic.

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⚠️ ACCURACY FLAGS FOR THE WRITER (read first)

These are the three places where the received popular account drifts from the text. Fixing them at the research stage rather than the fact-check stage:

1. "He brought Sauron home in chains" is NOT canon. The Akallabêth is explicit that Sauron came voluntarily, made "no offer of battle," and "assented as one constrained, yet in his secret thought he received it gladly." Appendix B's phrasing is "Sauron is taken as prisoner to Númenor" — prisoner/hostage, never chained. Tolkien in Letter 211 is blunter still: "Sauron's personal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning: he got free transport to Númenor!" The dramatically true framing is hostage who booked his own passage, not captive in irons.

2. "Within fifty years he was taking his advice" understates the canon. The Akallabêth says three years: "ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King." The fifty-odd-year figure is the span from Sauron's arrival (S.A. 3262) to the sailing of the Great Armament (3319) — 57 years — or to the start of its building (3310) — 48 years. Use three years to the inner council, fifty-seven years to the end of the world. The real number is far more damning than the softened one.

3. The fleet was NOT "a thousand ships." The Akallabêth says the fleets "were like an archipelago of a thousand isles." That is a simile for extent, not a ship count. Tolkien gives no number for the Great Armament anywhere. Do not state one. (By contrast, the nine ships of Elendil, 4 + 3 + 2, ARE stated — and are themselves a late revision; see Variants.)

Secondary flags: - Superlatives that ARE canonical (safe to use verbatim): "the mightiest and proudest… of all those that had wielded the Sceptre of the Sea-Kings since the foundation of Númenor" (Akallabêth); "the proudest and most powerful of all the Kings" (Appendix A); "the mightiest and last King of Númenor" (UT, "The Line of Elros"). Superlatives that are NOT canonical: "the greatest warrior of Númenor," "the greatest fleet ever built" (Appendix A says "the greatest armament that the world had seen," which is what to use), "the most powerful mortal who ever lived." Note also the qualified superlative: he "grew to the mightiest tyrant that had yet been in the world since the reign of Morgoth" — the qualifier is doing work; don't strip it. - Genealogy must be exact. Ar-Pharazôn was Tar-Palantir's nephew (son of Tar-Palantir's younger brother Gimilkhâd), and Tar-Míriel's first cousin — "the child of his father's brother" (UT). He was NOT her uncle, nor Tar-Palantir's son, nor Tar-Palantir's grandson. Amandil was the Lord of Andúnië, not a prince of the royal house; his line descended from Silmariën, daughter of the fourth King Tar-Elendil.

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Overview

Ar-Pharazôn the Golden is the only figure in Tolkien's legendarium who decides, as a policy, to invade heaven. That is what makes him worth an episode on his own terms rather than as the last chapter of Númenor's story. The Downfall is a catastrophe; Ar-Pharazôn is a sequence of choices — each one individually explicable, each one taken by a competent and popular man, and each one narrowing the next until the last choice available to him was to sail west with a war fleet against the Powers of the World.

He was born Pharazôn son of Gimilkhâd in S.A. 3118, into the losing half of a royal family quarrel. He died in S.A. 3319, aged 201, buried alive under the falling hills of Aman. In the sixty-four years between his seizure of the sceptre and the end of the world, he did six things that can each be dated and each be argued about:

1. He took a throne that was not his, by marrying the woman it belonged to (3255). 2. He sailed east and made the Dark Lord kneel to him at Umbar (3261–3262). 3. He brought the Dark Lord home and, within three years, was listening to him. 4. He cut down the White Tree he still half-believed his house depended on. 5. He built a temple to Morgoth and burned his own subjects in it. 6. He built the greatest fleet the world had seen and sailed it at Valinor (3310–3319).

Tolkien's own summary of the man, in a draft printed in The Peoples of Middle-earth, is the sharpest character key in the whole corpus: he "was a man of great beauty and stature, in the likeness of the first kings of men; and indeed in his youth he was not unlike the Edain of old in mind also, though he had courage and strength of will rather than of wisdom, as after appeared, when he was corrupted by the counsels of his father, and the acclaim of the people." That last clause is the thesis of the episode: Ar-Pharazôn was ruined twice before Sauron ever laid eyes on him — once by his father's politics, once by his own popularity.

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Primary Sources

The Silmarillion — Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor

The Akallabêth is the primary and near-only continuous narrative. In-universe it is attributed to Elendil (UT, "The Line of Elros," note 16: "The statement that Elendil was the author of the Akallabêth is made only here"). That attribution matters: **the account we have of Ar-Pharazôn is written by a survivor of his purges, by the son of the man he exiled.** It is not a neutral record.

On his rise before the throne:

"For Pharazôn son of Gimilkhâd had become a man yet more restless and eager for wealth and power
than his father. He had fared often abroad, as a leader in the wars that the Númenóreans made then
in the coastlands of Middle-earth, seeking to extend their dominion over Men; and thus he had won
great renown as a captain both by land and by sea. Therefore when he came back to Númenor, hearing
of his father's death, the hearts of the people were turned to him; for he brought with him great
wealth, and was for the time free in his giving."

On the seizure of the sceptre:

"And it came to pass that Tar-Palantir grew weary of grief and died. He had no son, but a daughter
only, whom he named Míriel in the Elven-tongue; and to her now by right and the laws of the
Númenóreans came the sceptre. But Pharazôn took her to wife against her will, doing evil in this
and evil also in that the laws of Númenor did not permit the marriage, even in the royal house, of
those more nearly akin than cousins in the second degree. And when they were wedded, he seized the
sceptre into his own hand, taking the title of Ar-Pharazôn (Tar-Calion in the Elven-tongue); and
the name of his queen he changed to Ar-Zimraphel."

"The mightiest and proudest was Ar-Pharazôn the Golden of all those that had wielded the Sceptre
of the Sea-Kings since the foundation of Númenor; and four and twenty Kings and Queens had ruled
the Númenóreans before, and slept now in their deep tombs under the mount of the Meneltarma, lying
upon beds of gold."

On the decision to challenge Sauron:

"And now there came to him the masters of ships and captains returning out of the East, and they
reported that Sauron was putting forth his might… and he had taken now the title of King of Men,
and declared his purpose to drive the Númenóreans into the sea, and destroy even Númenor, if that
might be."

"Great was the anger of Ar-Pharazôn at these tidings, and as he pondered long in secret, his heart
was filled with the desire of power unbounded and the sole dominion of his will. And he determined
without counsel of the Valar, or the aid of any wisdom but his own, that the title of King of
Men he would himself claim, and would compel Sauron to become his vassal and his servant; for in
his pride he deemed that no king should ever arise so mighty as to vie with the Heir of Eärendil."

On the landing at Umbar and the show of force:

"And men saw his sails coming up out of the sunset, dyed as with scarlet and gleaming with red and
gold, and fear fell upon the dwellers by the coasts, and they fled far away. But the fleet came at
last to that place that was called Umbar… Empty and silent were all the lands about when the King
of the Sea marched upon Middle-earth. For seven days he journeyed with banner and trumpet, and he
came to a hill, and he went up, and he set there his pavilion and his throne; and he sat him down
in the midst of the land, and the tents of his host were ranged all about him, blue, golden, and
white, as a field of tall flowers. Then he sent forth heralds, and he commanded Sauron to come
before him and swear to him fealty."

"And Sauron came. Even from his mighty tower of Barad-dûr he came, and made no offer of battle.
For he perceived that the power and majesty of the Kings of the Sea surpassed all rumour of them,
so that he could not trust even the greatest of his servants to withstand them; and he saw not his
time yet to work his will with the Dúnedain. And he was crafty, well skilled to gain what he would
by subtlety when force might not avail. Therefore he humbled himself before Ar-Pharazôn and
smoothed his tongue; and men wondered, for all that he said seemed fair and wise."

On the hostage decision — the hinge of his entire life:

"But Ar-Pharazôn was not yet deceived, and it came into his mind that, for the better keeping of
Sauron and of his oaths of fealty, he should be brought to Númenor, there to dwell as a hostage
for himself and all his servants in Middle-earth. **To this Sauron assented as one constrained,
yet in his secret thought he received it gladly, for it chimed indeed with his desire.**"

"And Sauron passed over the sea and looked upon the land of Númenor, and on the city of Armenelos
in the days of its glory, and he was astounded; but his heart within was filled the more with envy
and hate."

On the three years:

"Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth, and the strength of his hidden will, that ere
three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King; for flattery
sweet as honey was ever on his tongue, and knowledge he had of many things yet unrevealed to Men.
And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save
one alone, Amandil lord of Andúnië."

On the theological substitution — the door closes:

"And Ar-Pharazôn said: 'Who is the Lord of the Darkness?' Then behind locked doors Sauron spoke to
the King, and he lied, saying: 'It is he whose name is not now spoken; for the Valar have deceived
you concerning him, putting forward the name of Eru, a phantom devised in the folly of their
hearts… and his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedom, and he shall make you stronger than
they.'"

On Nimloth — the King's residual belief:

"And Sauron urged the King to cut down the White Tree, Nimloth the Fair, that grew in his courts,
for it was a memorial of the Eldar and of the light of Valinor. **At the first the King would not
assent to this, since he believed that the fortunes of his house were bound up with the Tree**, as
was forespoken by Tar-Palantir. Thus in his folly he who now hated the Eldar and the Valar vainly
clung to the shadow of the old allegiance of Númenor."

"At that time Nimloth was dark and bore no bloom, for it was late in the autumn, and its winter
was nigh; and Isildur passed through the guards and took from the Tree a fruit that hung upon it,
and turned to go. But the guard was aroused, and he was assailed, and fought his way out, receiving
many wounds… But when its first leaf opened then Isildur, who had lain long and come near to death,
arose and was troubled no more by his wounds."

"None too soon was this done; for after the assault the King yielded to Sauron and felled the
White Tree, and turned then wholly away from the allegiance of his fathers."

On the Temple:

"But Sauron caused to be built upon the hill in the midst of the city of the Númenóreans, Armenelos
the Golden, a mighty temple; and it was in the form of a circle at the base, and there the walls
were fifty feet in thickness, and the width of the base was five hundred feet across the centre,
and the walls rose from the ground five hundred feet, and they were crowned with a mighty dome. And
that dome was roofed all with silver, and rose glittering in the sun, so that the light of it could
be seen afar off; but soon the light was darkened, and the silver became black."

"And the first fire upon the altar Sauron kindled with the hewn wood of Nimloth, and it crackled
and was consumed; but men marvelled at the reek that went up from it, so that the land lay under a
cloud for seven days, until slowly it passed into the west."

On the persecution — and its bureaucratic dishonesty:

"And most often from among the Faithful they chose their victims; **yet never openly on the charge
that they would not worship Melkor**, the Giver of Freedom, rather was cause sought against them
that they hated the King and were his rebels, or that they plotted against their kin, devising lies
and poisons. These charges were for the most part false; yet those were bitter days, and hate
brings forth hate."

"But for all this Death did not depart from the land, rather it came sooner and more often, and in
many dreadful guises… And men took weapons in those days and slew one another for little cause…"

On the tyranny at its height:

"Thus Ar-Pharazôn, King of the Land of the Star, grew to the mightiest tyrant that had yet been in
the world since the reign of Morgoth, though in truth Sauron ruled all from behind the throne."

On Sauron's final temptation:

"'The Valar have possessed themselves of the land where there is no death; and they lie to you
concerning it… And though, doubtless, the gift of life unending is not for all, but only for such
as are worthy, being men of might and pride and great lineage, yet against all justice is it done
that this gift, which is his due, should be withheld from the King of Kings, Ar-Pharazôn, mightiest
of the sons of Earth, to whom Manwë alone can be compared, if even he. **But great kings do not
brook denials, and take what is their due.**'"

On the portents, and his refusal of them:

"'Behold the Eagles of the Lords of the West!' they cried. 'The Eagles of Manwë are come upon
Númenor!' And they fell upon their faces."

"'The Lords of the West have plotted against us. They strike first. The next blow shall be ours!'
These words the King himself spoke, but they were devised by Sauron."

"and a fiery bolt smote the dome of the Temple and shore it asunder, and it was wreathed in flame.
But the Temple itself was unshaken, and Sauron stood there upon the pinnacle and defied the
lightning and was unharmed; and in that hour men called him a god and did all that he would."

"For the land shook under them, and a groaning as of thunder underground was mingled with the
roaring of the sea, and smoke issued from the peak of the Meneltarma. **But all the more did
Ar-Pharazôn press on with his armament.**"

On the Armament:

"In that time the fleets of the 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 like a brooding cloud; and their banners were golden and black."

"Then Ar-Pharazôn hardened his heart, and he went aboard his mighty ship, Alcarondas, Castle of the
Sea. Many-oared it was and many-masted, golden and sable; and upon it the throne of Ar-Pharazôn was
set. Then he did on his panoply and his crown, and let raise his standard, and he gave the signal
for the raising of the anchors; and in that hour the trumpets of Númenor outrang the thunder."

"and there was little wind, but they had many oars and **many strong slaves to row beneath the
lash**."

On the wavering — the last human moment:

"For Ar-Pharazôn wavered at the end, and almost he turned back. His heart misgave him when he
looked upon the soundless shores and saw Taniquetil shining, whiter than snow, colder than death,
silent, immutable, terrible as the shadow of the light of Ilúvatar. But pride was now his master,
and at last he left his ship and strode upon the shore, claiming the land for his own, if none
should do battle for it. And a host of the Númenóreans encamped in might about Túna, whence all the
Eldar had fled."

On the end:

"But Ar-Pharazôn the King and the mortal warriors that had set foot upon the land of Aman were
buried under falling hills: there it is said that they lie imprisoned in the **Caves of the
Forgotten, until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom**."

"In an hour unlooked for by Men this doom befell, **on the nine and thirtieth day since the passing
of the fleets**."

On Sauron's three laughs — the sting in the tail:

"And Sauron, sitting in his black seat in the midst of the Temple, had laughed when he heard the
trumpets of Ar-Pharazôn sounding for battle; and again he had laughed when he heard the thunder of
the storm; and a third time, even as he laughed at his own thought, thinking what he would do now
in the world, being rid of the Edain for ever, he was taken in the midst of his mirth, and his seat
and his temple fell into the abyss."

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The Lord of the Rings — Appendix A (I, i) "Númenor"

Appendix A gives a materially different emphasis and one outright divergence. It never mentions the marriage to Míriel in the narrative; it presents Pharazôn as the leader of a rebellion:

"Tar-Palantir attempted to amend the evil; but it was too late, and there was **rebellion and
strife in Númenor. When he died, his nephew, leader of the rebellion**, seized the sceptre, and
became King Ar-Pharazôn. Ar-Pharazôn the Golden was the proudest and most powerful of all the
Kings, and no less than the kingship of the world was his desire."

"He resolved to challenge Sauron the Great for the supremacy in Middle-earth, and at length he
himself set sail with a great navy, and he landed at Umbar. So great was the might and splendour of
the Númenóreans that Sauron's own servants deserted him; and Sauron humbled himself, doing
homage, and craving pardon. Then Ar-Pharazôn in the folly of his pride carried him back as a
prisoner to Númenor. It was not long before he had bewitched the King and was master of his
counsel."

"And Sauron lied to the King, declaring that everlasting life would be his who possessed the
Undying Lands, and that the Ban was imposed only to prevent the Kings of Men from surpassing the
Valar. 'But great Kings take what is their right,' he said."

The lineage note in the same appendix:

"His daughter should have been the fourth Queen, Tar-Míriel, but the King's nephew usurped the
sceptre and became Ar-Pharazôn the Golden, last King of the Númenóreans."

And, from the note on regalia in Appendix A: "**The sceptre of Númenor is said to have perished with Ar-Pharazôn.**" (The sceptre of Annúminas that Elrond gives Aragorn is the silver rod of the Lords of Andúnië — i.e. Amandil's house, not the royal house.)

The Lord of the Rings — Appendix A (I, iv) "Gondor": the pillar at Umbar

An underused passage, and one of the best ironies available:

"The loss of Umbar was grievous to Gondor… because it was there that Ar-Pharazôn the Golden, last
King of Númenor, had landed and humbled the might of Sauron. Though great evil had come after, even
the followers of Elendil remembered with pride the coming of the great host of Ar-Pharazôn out of
the deeps of the Sea; and on the highest hill of the headland above the Haven they had set a great
white pillar as a monument. It was crowned with a globe of crystal that took the rays of the Sun
and of the Moon and shone like a bright star that could be seen in clear weather even on the coasts
of Gondor or far out upon the western sea. So it stood, until after the second arising of Sauron…
Umbar fell under the domination of his servants, and **the memorial of his humiliation was thrown
down**."

So: the Faithful's own descendants built a monument to Ar-Pharazôn's single greatest day — and Sauron's servants pulled it down a couple of thousand years later. The victory outlived the king by millennia and was still erased in the end.

The Lord of the Rings — Appendix B, The Tale of Years (Second Age)

Verbatim entries:

- 2280 — "Umbar is made into a great fortress of Númenor." (i.e. 981 years before Pharazôn landed there — Umbar was already Númenórean soil; he landed in his own harbour.) - 2350 — "Pelargir is built. It becomes the chief haven of the Faithful Númenóreans." - 3175 — "Repentance of Tar-Palantir. Civil war in Númenor." - 3255 — "Ar-Pharazôn the Golden seizes the sceptre." - 3261 — "Ar-Pharazôn sets sail and lands at Umbar." - 3262 — "Sauron is taken as prisoner to Númenor; **3262–3310 Sauron seduces the King and corrupts the Númenóreans.**" - 3310 — "Ar-Pharazôn begins the building of the Great Armament." - 3319 — "Ar-Pharazôn assails Valinor. Downfall of Númenor. Elendil and his sons escape." - 3320 — "Foundations of the Realms in Exile: Arnor and Gondor. The Stones are divided. Sauron returns to Mordor."

Unfinished Tales — "The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor"

The registry entries, verbatim where quoted:

- Ar-Gimilzôr (XXIII): born 2960, ruled 75 years, died 3177. "He was the greatest enemy of the Faithful that had yet arisen; and he forbade utterly the use of the Eldarin tongues… He revered nothing, and went never to the Hallow of Eru." Wedded Inzilbêth, "secretly of the Faithful… and there was small love between them, and strife between their sons." - Gimilkhâd (Pharazôn's father): born 3044, died 3243. Ar-Gimilzôr "would fain have appointed his Heir, had the laws allowed." - Tar-Palantir (XXIV): born 3035, ruled 78 years, died 3255. "Tar-Palantir prophesied, saying that when the Tree died then the line of Kings also would perish." Of Gimilkhâd: he "became leader of the King's Party, and resisted the will of Tar-Palantir as openly as he dared, and yet more in secret." - On the succession: "when the King died she was taken to wife by Pharazôn son of Gimilkhâd (who also was dead) **against her will, and against the law of Númenor since she was the child of his father's brother**." - Ar-Pharazôn (Tar-Calion) (XXV): "The mightiest and last King of Númenor. He was born in the year 3118, and ruled for 64 years, and died in the Downfall the year 3319, usurping the sceptre of Tar-Míriel." - Tar-Míriel (Ar-Zimraphel): "She was born in the year 3117, and died in the Downfall." - Closing note: "Of the deeds of Ar-Pharazôn, of his glory and his folly, more is told in the tale of the Downfall of Númenor which Elendil wrote, and which was preserved in Gondor."

Derived arithmetic (mark as derived, not stated): Pharazôn was 137 at his accession and 201 at his death; Míriel was one year his senior (b. 3117), and 202 at hers. Sauron was in Númenor 57 years (3262–3319). The Great Armament was nine years in the building (3310–3319). Gimilkhâd died at 199 by UT's dates, which the Akallabêth renders as "two years before his two hundredth year" — a one-year wobble between the two texts; cite UT's 3243 and the Akallabêth's phrasing, not a reconciled number.

Christopher Tolkien's own note on the discrepancy in Tar-Palantir's dates: "It would seem almost certain from these statements that 3175 was the year of his accession; and this is borne out by the fact that in 'The Line of Elros' the death-date of his father Ar-Gimilzôr was originally given as 3175, and only later emended to 3177."

Unfinished Tales — "A Description of the Island of Númenor"

Essential for understanding what Ar-Pharazôn actually abolished when he forbade the Meneltarma:

"Near to the centre of the Mittalmar stood the tall mountain called the Meneltarma, Pillar of the
Heavens, sacred to the worship of Eru Ilúvatar… **No building, no raised altar, not even a pile of
undressed stones, ever stood there; and no other likeness of a temple did the Númenóreans possess
in all the days of their grace, until the coming of Sauron.** There no tool or weapon had ever been
borne; and there none might speak any word, save the King only."

"Thrice only in each year the King spoke, offering prayer for the coming year at the Erukyermë in
the first days of spring, praise of Eru Ilúvatar at the Erulaitalë in midsummer, and thanksgiving to
him at the Eruhantalë at the end of autumn."

"No bird ever came there, save only eagles. If anyone approached the summit, at once three eagles
would appear and alight upon three rocks near to the western edge… They were called the **Witnesses
of Manwë**."

Also: "In Arandor were the haven of Rómenna, the Meneltarma, and Armenelos, the City of the Kings." And the Valley of the Tombs: "at its head chambers were cut in the rock at the base of the mountain, in which were the tombs of the Kings and Queens of Númenor" — Noirinan, where the twenty-four predecessors lay "upon beds of gold," and where Ar-Pharazôn's body was never laid.

For two thousand years an eagle pair nested in the tower of the King's palace at Armenelos, "until the days of evil and the hatred of the Valar began." The birds that had lived on the King's bounty returned in his last decade as the storm-shaped Eagles of Manwë.

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Letter 211 (to Rhona Beare, 1958) — the single most important external gloss, and it demolishes the popular version of the Umbar episode:

"Ar-Pharazôn, as is told in the 'Downfall' or Akallabêth, **conquered a terrified Sauron's
subjects, not Sauron**."

"Sauron's personal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning: he got free transport to Númenor!"

"**He naturally had the One Ring, and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the
Númenóreans.**"

"I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring."

"Though reduced to 'a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind', I do not think one need boggle at this
spirit carrying off the One Ring."

Letter 131 (to Milton Waldman, 1951) — Tolkien's own framing of the myth: "The particular 'myth' which lies behind this tale, and the mood both of Men and Elves at this time, is the Downfall of Númenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition." Letter 131 is also where Tolkien names his recurring themes as Fall, Mortality, and the Machine — the Númenórean sin is all three at once: a Fall (breaking a Ban), about Mortality (they wanted deathlessness), executed by the Machine (a war fleet).

Letter 156 (to Robert Murray, 1954): "Sauron was defeated by a 'miracle': a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world, when appealed to by Manwë." And: "At the moment that Ar-Pharazôn set foot on the forbidden shore, a rift appeared: Númenor foundered and was utterly overwhelmed; the armada was swallowed up; and the Blessed Realm removed for ever from the circles of the physical world."

Letter 131 also calls the Downfall "the Second Fall of Man," ending "not only of the Second Age, but of the Old World, the primeval world of legend," and contains the formulation every "machine" reading depends on: the "desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective — and so to the Machine (or Magic)."

Letter 257 (to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964) — the origin story and the dream, verbatim from the Tolkien Estate's own published text of the letter:

"When C.S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-travel and I on time-travel, I began
an abortive book of time-travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning
of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West."

"In sleep I had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave, either coming out of the quiet sea, or
coming in towering over the green inlands."

"It is a curious chance that the stem √talat used in Q[uenya] for 'slipping, sliding, falling
down', of which atalantie is a normal (in Q) noun-formation, should so much resemble Atlantis."

*(Note on a widely-circulated quotation: a catalogue of Ar-Pharazôn's Númenor as a modern police state — "informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, propaganda… rewriting of history… weapons of war" — is attributed to Christopher Tolkien's commentary in Sauron Defeated by several secondary sources. It was not located in the text read for these notes. Verify before putting it on screen.)*

*(Note: Letters quotations above are attested via multiple secondary compilations rather than from a copy of the printed volume; treat page numbers as unverified and cite by letter number only.)*

The History of Middle-earth XII — The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The History of the Akallabêth"

This is where the character study gets genuinely interesting, because Christopher Tolkien prints three abandoned drafts in which his father tried to rewrite Pharazôn's marriage — and invented a character who exists nowhere else.

Text (a) — the fullest, on Pharazôn's youth:

"He [Ar-Pharazôn] was a man of great beauty and strength/stature after the image of the first kings,
and indeed in his youth was not unlike the Edain of old in mind also, though he had **strength of
will rather than of wisdom** as after appeared, when he was corrupted by the counsels of his father
and the acclaim of the people. In his earlier days he had a close friendship with Amandil who
was afterwards Lord of Andúnië, and he had loved the people of the House of Valandil with whom he
had kinship (through Inzilbêth his father's mother). With them he was often a guest, and there came
Zimrahil his cousin, daughter of Inziladûn who was later King Tar-Palantir. **Elentir the brother
of Amandil loved her**, but when first she saw Pharazôn her eyes and her heart were turned to him,
for his beauty, and for his wealth also."

"But Pharazôn [?arose] and came to her, and she was glad, and forsook the allegiance of her
father for the time, being enamoured of Pharazôn… And when they were wedded **she yielded the
sceptre to Pharazôn**, and he sat upon the throne of Elros in the name of Ar-Pharazôn the Golden,
but she retained also her title as hers by right, and was called Ar-Zimrahil."
(PoME, "The History of the Akallabêth," p. 160)

Text (b) — Míriel described physically, and betrothed:

"Now Zimrahil, whom her father called Míriel, only daughter of Tar-Palantir, was a woman of great
beauty, smaller [?in… stature] than were most women of that land, with bright eyes… She was **older
than Ar-Pharazôn by one year**, but seemed younger, and his eyes and heart were turned to her; but
the laws of Númenor lay between, beside the displeasure of her father whom Gimilkhâd opposed in all
ways that he could… And moreover Zimrahil was betrothed to Elentir Amandil's [?older] brother
and heir of Númendil."

And the scene, half-legible: "when Zimrahil saw Pharazôn in the splendour of his young manhood come riding [?in]… Suddenly Zimrahil's heart turned towards him. And when Pharazôn was greeted upon the steps of the house their eyes met… and were abashed."

Text (d) — a marginal note that moves the persecution EARLIER, to his accession:

"And he persecuted the Faithful, and **deprived the Lords of Andúnië of their lordship, since they
had aided Tar-Palantir and supported his daughter**. Andúnië he took then and made it the chief
harbour of the king's ships, and Amandil the Lord he commanded to dwell in Rómenna. Yet he did not
otherwise molest him, nor dismiss him yet from his Council. **For in the days of his youth (ere his
father corrupted him) Amandil had been his dear friend.**"

Christopher's verdict: "I am inclined to think that… texts (a), (b), and (c) in fact followed the writing of the long rider to the Akallabêth, and that they represent **the emergence of a doubt in my father's mind whether the marriage of Pharazôn and Zimrahil was indeed 'against her will'**… Finally, on this view, he abandoned the new story, and returned to that already present… **Amandil's brother Elentir was lost, at any rate in the recorded tradition.**"

Editorial admissions worth quoting on their own: Christopher records altering "four and twenty Kings and Queens" to "three and twenty" and re-numbering Ar-Adûnakhôr and Ar-Gimilzôr, and calls these "(incorrect) changes." He records that the Queen's Adûnaic name is Ar-Zimrahil in every source except one late change his father made on a typescript, which he adopted as Ar-Zimraphel and then "silently" propagated back into "The Line of Elros" and "Aldarion and Erendis." He records changing "Umbar, where there was a mighty haven that no hand had wrought" to "the mighty haven **of the Númenóreans**," because Appendix B makes Umbar Númenórean from S.A. 2280 — adding: "It is probable that when my father wrote this he did not yet suppose that Umbar was a Númenórean fortress and harbour at the time of Ar-Pharazôn's landing."

Also: the great ship is Aglarrâma in the earlier text, changed to Alkarondas/Alcarondas. And the surviving ships were twelve in every manuscript — "six for Elendil, and for Isildur four, and for Anárion two" — until Tolkien changed them to "nine: four, three, two," noting in the margin: "Nine, unless the rhyme in LR is altered to Four times three." A published song in *The Two Towers* dictated the number of ships that escaped the fall of Númenor.

And the Akallabêth was originally framed as a tale told to Ælfwine, the Anglo-Saxon mariner: "But who among Men, Ælfwine, can tell the tale of their fate? For neither ship nor man of all that host returned ever to the lands of the living…"

The History of Middle-earth IX — Sauron Defeated, "The Drowning of Anadûnê"

The Mannish tradition of the same events, in Adûnaic dress, written c. 1946. Names: Ar-Pharazôn (unchanged), Zigûr = Sauron, Arbazân/Aphanuzîr = Amandil, Nimruzîr = Elendil, Azrabêl = Eärendil, Indilzar = Elros, Ar-Zimrahil = Míriel, Arminalêth / Ar-Minalêth = Armenelos, Menel-tûbal = Meneltarma, Anadûnê / Yôzayan = Númenor, Avalôi / Avaldi = Valar, Nimrî = Elves, Arûn-Mulkhêr = Melkor, Adûnâi = Númenóreans, Eruhîn = Children of Eru.

The round-world debate — the single best unused Ar-Pharazôn scene in the corpus. The Valar's messengers teach that the world is round:

"'And behold! the fashion of the Earth is such that a girdle may be set about it. Or as an apple it
hangeth on the branches of Heaven, and it is round and fair, and the seas and lands are but the rind
of the fruit…'"

Ar-Pharazôn's response, in council, is a legal argument:

"'For if we shall believe this,' he said, 'that one who goeth west shall return out of the East,
then shall it not also be that one who goeth ever east shall come up at last behind the West, **and
yet break no ban?**'"

Amandil's counter, as Christopher records it from a marginal addition: "**Yet to go behind a command is not to keep it.**"

And Pharazôn's practical conclusion: "'Nonetheless we may give thought to this road, if it may be discovered.' And he pondered in his secret thought the building of ships of great draught and burden, and the setting up of outposts of his power upon far shores."

Other DA distinctives: - The neglect of the state religion is laid at his own door directly: "**But he Ar-Pharazôn the king fell into doubt, and in his day the offering of the first-fruits was neglected**; and men went seldom to the hallow in the high place… and they turned the more to works of handicraft, and to the gathering of wealth… and they drank and they feasted and they clad themselves in silver and gold." - Sauron's lie is inverted: in DA he tells men the world is not a closed circle, so the Valar's round-world teaching is the thing he denies. - The tents at Umbar: Christopher's personal recollection of his father reading the passage aloud in 1946 — "I remember my father, in his study in the house in North Oxford, reading me *The Drowning of Anadûnê* on a summer's evening… Of this reading I recall with clarity that the tents of Ar-Pharazôn were as a field of tall flowers of many colours." - Aman itself is destroyed: "the land of Aman and the land of his gift… were also destroyed; for their roots were loosened, and they fell and foundered, and they are no more. And the Avalôi thereafter had no habitation on Earth… and the Avalôi dwell in secret, or have become as shadows and their power has waned." - The interval is different: "on the seventh evening since the passing of the fleets" (vs. the Akallabêth's thirty-ninth day). - In DA, Ar-Pharazôn is the ninth, then thirteenth/fourteenth king depending on draft — the king-count was unstable for years.

The History of Middle-earth V — The Lost Road, "The Fall of Númenor"

The earliest layer. The king is Angor and the queen Istar; Sauron is Sûr/Thû. By the next stratum the pair are Tar-kalion and Tar-ilien — and crucially, in these versions the **queen falls with her husband**, seduced along with him. Míriel-as-victim is a late development; Míriel-as- rightful-queen is later still; and Míriel-as-willing-bride (PoME) is later than that and abandoned.

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Timeline (Second Age)

| Year | Event | Source | |---|---|---| | 2280 | Umbar made a great fortress of Númenor | App. B | | 2350 | Pelargir built; chief haven of the Faithful | App. B | | 2899 | Ar-Adûnakhôr takes the sceptre (first king with an Adûnaic royal name) | App. B | | 2960 | Ar-Gimilzôr born | UT, Line of Elros | | 3035 | Inziladûn (later Tar-Palantir) born | UT | | 3044 | Gimilkhâd born | UT | | 3117 | Míriel born | UT | | 3118 | Pharazôn born | UT | | 3175 | "Repentance of Tar-Palantir. Civil war in Númenor." | App. B | | 3177 | Ar-Gimilzôr dies; Tar-Palantir's reign (78 yrs total) | UT | | 3243 | Gimilkhâd dies (aged 199) | UT | | 3255 | Tar-Palantir dies. Pharazôn marries Míriel and seizes the sceptre | App. B, Akallabêth, UT | | 3261 | Ar-Pharazôn sets sail and lands at Umbar; seven-day march inland | App. B, Akallabêth | | 3262 | Sauron taken as prisoner to Númenor | App. B | | c. 3265 | Sauron "closest to the secret counsels of the King" (three years after arrival) | Akallabêth | | 3262–3310 | "Sauron seduces the King and corrupts the Númenóreans" | App. B | | — | Nimloth felled; Temple built; Isildur's theft of the fruit; human sacrifice begins | Akallabêth (undated) | | 3310 | Great Armament begun | App. B | | 3319 | Armament sails; Ban broken; Ar-Pharazôn lands at Aman; Downfall | App. B | | 3319 +39 days | Doom falls (Akallabêth) / +7 evenings (Drowning of Anadûnê) | Sil. / HoME IX | | 3320 | Arnor and Gondor founded; Sauron returns to Mordor | App. B |

Note the six-year gap between the seizure of the sceptre (3255) and the sailing east (3261). Tolkien gives no events for those six years. That is a real silence in the record and should be flagged as such rather than filled with invention.

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Key Characters

Ar-Pharazôn (Tar-Calion), b. 3118 — d. 3319. Twenty-fifth and last ruler. Son of Gimilkhâd, nephew of Tar-Palantir, first cousin and husband of Tar-Míriel. A career soldier before he was a king: "a leader in the wars that the Númenóreans made then in the coastlands of Middle-earth, seeking to extend their dominion over Men… great renown as a captain both by land and by sea." Physically in the mould of the ancient Edain; "strength of will rather than of wisdom." Fate: buried under falling hills at Aman, imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten until the Last Battle. He is one of the very few characters in Tolkien whose story does not end with death — he is waiting.

Tar-Míriel / Ar-Zimraphel (Ar-Zimrahil), b. 3117 — d. 3319. Only child of Tar-Palantir; rightful fourth Ruling Queen by Tar-Aldarion's law of primogeniture. Married against her will; renamed by her husband. Her death is the most physically precise image in the Akallabêth: "the mounting wave, green and cold and plumed with foam, climbing over the land, took to its bosom Tar-Míriel the Queen, fairer than silver or ivory or pearls. Too late she strove to ascend the steep ways of the Meneltarma to the holy place; for the waters overtook her, and her cry was lost in the roaring of the wind." She dies trying to reach the sanctuary her husband had made a capital offence to climb.

Gimilkhâd, b. 3044 — d. 3243. Younger son of Ar-Gimilzôr; leader of the King's Men against his own brother; the man Ar-Gimilzôr would have made heir "had the laws allowed." Tolkien's draft says Pharazôn was "corrupted by the counsels of his father." He died twelve years before his son took the throne — long enough for the son to inherit the faction without inheriting the blame.

Tar-Palantir (Inziladûn), b. 3035 — d. 3255. The uncle. Repentant king, tender of the White Tree, resumer of the Three Prayers, and prophet of his own dynasty's end: "when the Tree died then the line of Kings also would perish." He "would spend much of his time in the west… whence he gazed westward in yearning, hoping to see, maybe, some sail upon the sea. But no ship came ever again from the West to Númenor." His reign ends in "rebellion and strife" (App. B: civil war).

Sauron (Zigûr). Arrived S.A. 3262 as a hostage with, per Letter 211, the One Ring on his hand and Ar-Pharazôn in ignorance of it. Rose to chief counsellor in three years; became High Priest of Melkor; survived a lightning strike on the Temple dome in full public view — "and in that hour men called him a god." Lost his fair form in the Downfall and laughed three times before the abyss took his throne.

Amandil, Lord of Andúnië. Pharazôn's boyhood friend, his last honest councillor, and the only man who did not fawn on Sauron. Dismissed but not killed, "for he was so noble, and had been so mighty a captain of the sea, that he was still held in honour by many of the people, and neither the King nor Sauron dared to lay hands on him as yet." Sailed west in secret to plead with Manwë, in explicit imitation of Eärendil, taking three servants; never heard of again: "Men could not a second time be saved by any such embassy, and for the treason of Númenor there was no easy absolving."

Elendil and Isildur. Elendil "did all that his father had bidden… and ever he looked for a sign that did not come," refusing the King's summons to war and lying off Rómenna when the wave came. Isildur, in the story's one act of physical heroism against Pharazôn's regime, stole a fruit of Nimloth in disguise, fought his way out "receiving many wounds," and did not recover until the seedling's first leaf opened.

Elentir (PoME only). Amandil's brother, betrothed to Míriel in the abandoned drafts; the man Pharazôn displaced. Christopher: "so far as I am aware he appears nowhere else… Elentir was lost, at any rate in the recorded tradition."

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Geography

- Armenelos (Adûnaic Arminalêth), the City of the Kings, in Arandor the Kingsland, in the central Mittalmar. Site of the royal courts where Nimloth grew, and of the hill on which Sauron's temple was raised. - Meneltarma, the Pillar of Heaven, at the island's centre — the only holy place, with no building on it in all Númenor's history "until the coming of Sauron," and the only place where the King spoke in a sacred capacity, three times a year. Ar-Pharazôn made ascending it a capital offence. At its foot, Noirinan, the Valley of the Tombs, holding twenty-four rulers on beds of gold. - Rómenna, the eastern haven — where Ar-Gimilzôr had already forced the Faithful to resettle, and where Amandil withdrew and Elendil's nine ships lay when the world ended. - Andúnië, the western haven and seat of the Lords of Andúnië. In one abandoned draft, Pharazôn seized it as the chief harbour of the king's shipbuilding at the start of his reign. - Umbar, the great natural haven south of Gondor, Númenórean since S.A. 2280. Pharazôn landed in his own port and marched seven days inland to plant his throne on a hill. Later marked by the white pillar with its crystal globe — thrown down when Umbar fell to Sauron's servants. - Barad-dûr, from which Sauron came on foot to kneel. - Túna, the hill of the Elven-city in Aman, "whence all the Eldar had fled" — where the Númenórean host encamped. Taniquetil, the mountain that made Ar-Pharazôn hesitate. Avallónë and Tol Eressëa, encompassed by his fleet on the way in.

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Themes and Symbolism

The Ban as Eden. Tolkien's Númenórean prohibition is arbitrary in form and absolute in force: sail as far as you like, but not so far west that Númenor drops below the horizon. It exists to be a limit, not to protect anything the Númenóreans would have wanted. Tolkien himself in Letter 131 calls his central theme in a story of Men "inevitably… a Ban, or Prohibition."

Deathlessness misunderstood as a place. The Valar's messengers try to explain that the land does not confer immortality: "it is not the land of Aman that maketh its people deathless, but the dwellers therein do hallow the land; and there you should rather wither the sooner, as moths in a flame too bright and hot" (Drowning of Anadûnê). Ar-Pharazôn's entire war rests on a category error he was explicitly warned about.

Inverted liturgy. The Meneltarma had no building, no altar, no tool, no weapon, and near-total silence. Sauron's temple is a 500-foot dome of blackened silver with a permanent fire and a smoke-hole, built on a hill inside the city. Every feature is a deliberate negative of the mountain: enclosure vs. openness, artifice vs. untouched rock, perpetual smoke vs. three spoken prayers a year, blood vs. silence.

Sacrifice as politics. The victims were "most often from among the Faithful," but the charges were always secular — sedition, conspiracy, poisoning. Tolkien's dry gloss is the darkest line in the chapter: "These charges were for the most part false; yet those were bitter days, and hate brings forth hate."

The machine. With Sauron's aid "they multiplied their possessions, and they devised engines, and they built ever greater ships." The Armament is a technological answer to a metaphysical problem — Letter 131's third theme in one image.

The monument that outlived the man. The white pillar at Umbar is Tolkien's most compact statement of how history rates Ar-Pharazôn: his enemies' descendants honoured his one great day for two thousand years, and then his own creature's servants pulled it down.

Providence through the wounded. Isildur is nearly killed stealing the fruit and is healed only when the first leaf opens — an image of the whole rescue: the line survives through an act that almost killed the man who performed it.

The Caves of the Forgotten. Ar-Pharazôn is not permitted the mortality he spent his life running from. He is buried alive "until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom." The man who refused death is denied it.

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Scholarly Perspectives

*Important structural finding: Ar-Pharazôn as a character* has essentially no dedicated
peer-reviewed scholarship.** The academy writes about the Downfall as event, theme, and textual
history. Every character-level reading available is fan-scholarship or religious commentary. This
is an opportunity — the episode is filling a real gap — but **do not imply academic backing that
isn't there**, and do not attribute a character reading of Ar-Pharazôn to Shippey, Flieger, Drout,
Birns or Fisher. None of them wrote one.

Tom Shippey (The Road to Middle-earth) — use for philology and decline, not character. Shippey's argument is that Númenor was generated by the name-chain, not the reverse: the Germanic Alboin / Ælfwine → Eadwine / Audoin → Elendil, "Elf-friend" is the philological engine, and the story was reconstructed backwards from it ("asterisk-reality" — the reconstructed but unattested form). He identifies an "inexorable downward progression" running from the Second Age to the modern world, with the Downfall as the "Changing of the World," the moment flat Arda becomes a globe. His Old English anchor is Deor: "Time has passed since then, this too can pass." **No Shippey passage on Ar-Pharazôn himself was located.**

Verlyn Flieger (A Question of Time, Kent State UP 1997; Interrupted Music, 2005) — the Númenor material as time-travel apparatus. She reads The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers through J.W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time (1927): dream as access to all dimensions of time, "racial memory and serial identity" carrying father and son back to the drowning. She treats Tolkien's "Atlantis complex" — the recurring Great Wave dream — as the generative seed, and resists Tolkien's own dismissal of the atalantië/Atlantis resemblance as coincidence. In *Interrupted Music she links the material to the medieval Irish immram* (otherworld sea-voyage) and to Tolkien's frame-narrative machinery. *(A widely-repeated "Flieger 72" page cite for the Atlantis point could not be verified — paraphrase, don't cite the page.)*

Alastair Whyte — the best political citation available. "Many a Tale of Dread: The Dystopian Interface of Totalitarianism and Colonial Imperialism in the Númenor Narratives of J.R.R. Tolkien," Journal of Language, Literature and Culture 67.2–3 (2020): 83–96. Peer-reviewed. Taking the revision history 1934 → late 1950s as his case, Whyte argues the Númenor texts present totalitarian domestic rule and colonial subjugation abroad as one interrelated phenomenon, not two evils: the tribute-extraction, the coastal fortresses, the enslavement and the altars in Middle-earth are the same disease as the informer-state at home. This maps exactly onto the Akallabêth's own sequencing: the sacrifices at Armenelos and the slave-raiding abroad are described in consecutive paragraphs.

Pamina Fernández Camacho — "Elven-Latin and Semitic Adûnaic: Linguistic, Religious, and Political Strife in Tolkien's Island of Númenor," Journal of Inklings Studies 13.1 (2023). Reads Númenor as a thalassocracy on the Carthaginian model — sea-empire, hubris, and above all ritual human sacrifice, with Melkor's name resonant with the Phoenician Melqart — and connects this to two 19th-century British habits: hunting for "Semitic" roots of British culture, and the hostile Britain-as-Carthage analogy. Quenya, Tolkien's self-described "Elven-Latin," is the language "for ceremony, and for high matters of lore and song," so the Adûnaic/Quenya split re-enacts Protestant/Catholic strife. **This is the frame that makes Ar-Pharazôn's Adûnaic regnal name a religious-political act rather than a fashion.* (Authorship inferred from search adjacency — confirm before naming her on screen.)*

Charles Delattre ("Númenor et l'Atlantide: une écriture en héritage," *Revue de littérature comparée*, 2007) — the Plato parallels itemised: an island "geometrically laid out to reflect its balance and harmony"; "unmatched power, with a strong fleet"; Atlantean pride; and a destruction recalling "divine Old Testament retribution on Sodom and Gomorrah." He also notes Númenor is "at once marginal and central," surviving into LOTR only as a Gondor "keeping alive the illusion" of vanished greatness.

Giuseppe Pezzini (Thersites, 2022) — situates Arda's downward trajectory in Hesiod's ages-of-metal and Ovid, and notes that Tolkien wrote the compound "Númenor-Atlantis" in his own letters, making the link explicit rather than inferred.

Eric Schweicher, "Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion," Mythlore 21.2 (1996) — **the anchor for the theological reading in real scholarship.** The westward Ban is structurally Eden's prohibition: a command + a tempter + a forbidden object, with the object here being immortality rather than knowledge.

Bradley J. Birzer (in Drout, ed., The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Routledge 2006) — Tolkien held "every story was essentially about a fall." Númenor belongs to a series with Melkor's fall and Fëanor's. Ar-Pharazôn is a repetition, not an anomaly.

Marjorie Burns (Mythlore, 1989) — the useful counterweight. The "sense of inevitable disintegration" in Tolkien is Norse, not Christian-providential: in that cosmology even gods die, and "though Sauron may go, the elves will fade as well." The Downfall as doom rather than as judgment.

John Garth (The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, 2020) — the real-world sediment, verbatim: "Babylonian and Egyptian legends, the travels of Alexander, and the Old Testament all seep into his saga of Númenor, with its Semitic-Akkadian inspired language, hubristic and long-lived kings, Assyrian-style architecture, and eventual angry sweeping away, an epochal disaster from which only the righteous Elendil escapes, flying before the flood like Noah."

John Bowers (Tolkien's Lost Chaucer, OUP) — documents that a manuscript page of Tolkien's Boethius commentary cites a specific chapter of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, concluding Tolkien "knew Gibbon from his own reading" and "shared the historian's sense of decline." Pairs with Tolkien's own line to Waldman that Gondor fades into "a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium."

Charles W. Nelson, "The Sins of Middle-earth: Tolkien's Use of Medieval Allegory" (2000) — maps characters onto the medieval seven-sins scheme. *Caution: his worked examples are from LOTR*, not the Akallabêth.* Usable as a lens for Ar-Pharazôn's superbia*; do not attribute a Númenor reading to him.

Fan-scholarship and religious commentary (label as such on screen)

- Russandol, "So, who was Ar-Pharazôn?" (Silmarillion Writers' Guild) — **the best pure character study found at any level.** Core move: the usurpation-by-marriage is the tell. A man already willing to break a specific written law for ambition is a man with a lever, and Sauron pulls exactly that lever later. Also: his resentment of the Valar's withheld immortality **pre-existed Sauron**, who only weaponised it. Two quotable lines: "Ignorance is dangerous, even more so when dealing with a foe such as" the Deceiver; and "Guile and patience had indeed proved more fruitful than violence." - K.R. Harriman, "Biblical and Theological Commentary on Sauron Defeated" (Substack) — documents the sequence neglect of Eru → false worship of Mulkhêr → total corruption, and reads Sauron functionally as the serpent: offering forbidden immortality while concealing death. Cites the creed inversion at SD 347 — Melkor as the one who made the world out of the darkness, "And only Darkness is truly holy" — and Ar-Pharazôn's demand for immortality "on their own terms, not waiting upon hope" (SD 365). - Ben Reinhard (Franciscan University), "Númenor and the Decline of America," Crisis Magazine — academic author, opinion venue. His sequence: enamoured "of the work of their hands—and the less willing to leave it" → "fear of death grew ever darker upon them" → outward turn toward "wealth and dominion in Middle-earth" → state-sponsored demonic worship, with "the Faithful… persecuted as enemies of the state." - Andrew Ray Williams, "Twice-Told Tales: Tolkien's Númenor, America, and the Church," Center for Pastor Theologians (2025) — ties the Downfall to Letter 131's "Machine": any system that denies human limits and worships control.

The captive-counsellor motif — build this yourself

No dedicated scholarship exists on it. What does exist is structural, and the strongest antecedent is internal and unmistakably deliberate: Melkor's own arc — taken captive by the Valar, imprisoned three ages in Mandos, released on feigned repentance through Manwë's mercy, then destroying Valinor from inside the court that pardoned him. Sauron in Númenor runs the same story with one crucial inversion: the hostage does not escape, he is promoted — prisoner, then chief counsellor, then High Priest of a state cult. Ar-Pharazôn's own pride is the mechanism: Sauron's captivity was the proof of the King's supremacy, which is precisely what made the King unable to look at his captive. Gríma and Théoden is the LOTR miniature. The external antecedent — the exile who becomes the foreign king's indispensable counsellor and dream-reader (Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon), here inverted into a diabolic parody — is an original reading, not sourced; present it as the channel's own.

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Contradictions and Variants

1. Was the marriage forced? Akallabêth and UT: "against her will." PoME draft (a): "she was glad… being enamoured of Pharazôn," and "she yielded the sceptre to Pharazôn… but she retained also her title as hers by right." Christopher's judgement: his father developed "a doubt… whether the marriage… was indeed 'against her will'," sketched a new story, and abandoned it. **Present as a variant, not a correction.** 2. Did Míriel marry at all in the received Appendix? Appendix A never mentions the marriage; it says the nephew "usurped the sceptre." Appendix A also makes Pharazôn "leader of the rebellion" during Tar-Palantir's reign, where the Akallabêth gives that role to his father Gimilkhâd. 3. Did the persecution start before Sauron? Published Akallabêth: Amandil remains a councillor "until the coming of Sauron." PoME marginal note (d): Pharazôn "persecuted the Faithful, and deprived the Lords of Andúnië of their lordship" at his accession, because they had backed Míriel. 4. The Queen's Adûnaic name. Ar-Zimrahil in every source; Ar-Zimraphel only from one late authorial change on a typescript, which Christopher adopted and back-propagated "silently." 5. The flagship. Aglarrâma in The Drowning of Anadûnê and the earlier Akallabêth; Alcarondas in the published text. Both glossed "Castle of the Sea." 6. The interval to doom. Thirty-ninth day (Akallabêth) vs. seventh evening (*Drowning of Anadûnê*). 7. What was destroyed. Akallabêth: Aman is removed beyond reach. Drowning of Anadûnê: Aman is destroyed, and the Valar "dwell in secret, or have become as shadows and their power has waned." 8. Flat vs. round world. In DA the Valar teach a round world and Sauron denies it; in the Akallabêth the world is flat until Ilúvatar changes it. This is Tolkien's unresolved cosmological problem, and it changes what Ar-Pharazôn's sin is. 9. The escaping ships. Twelve (6/4/2) in all manuscripts, changed to nine (4/3/2) with the margin note "Nine, unless the rhyme in LR is altered to Four times three." 10. King-count. Christopher admits altering "four and twenty Kings and Queens" to "three and twenty" and calls his own change "(incorrect)." Different printings of The Silmarillion differ. In DA drafts Pharazôn is variously the 9th, 13th, or 14th king. 11. Tar-Palantir's accession. UT gives 3177; Appendix B implies 3175; Christopher says 3175 "was the year of his accession" and that the UT date was a late emendation "in contradiction to the Tale of Years." 12. Earliest names. The Lost Road layer: King Angor, Queen Istar, Sauron as Sûr/Thû; then Tar-kalion and Tar-ilien, with the Queen falling with her husband rather than resisting him. 13. The Ælfwine frame. The Akallabêth was originally addressed to a named Anglo-Saxon listener; Christopher removed him. 14. Umbar's status. Christopher's editorial change makes Umbar an established Númenórean fortress at the landing; Tolkien's original ("a mighty haven that no hand had wrought," "Empty and silent under the sickle moon") probably did not assume that.

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Linguistic Notes

- Pharazôn — Adûnaic, from pharaz "gold"; Ar-Pharazôn = "the Golden." His Quenya regnal name is Tar-Calion. The Adûnaic royal names of his predecessors follow the same pattern: Ar-Adûnakhôr "Lord of the West" (the title that scandalised the Faithful, "being the title of the Valar"), Ar-Gimilzôr and Gimilkhâd (gimil "stars"), Ar-Sakalthôr (sakal "shore"), Ar-Zimrathôn and Ar-Zimrahil/Zimraphel (zimra "jewel"), Ar-Inziladûn and Inzilbêth (inzil "flower" — Christopher notes a design of his father's titled Inziladûn glossed in Fëanorian script as Numellótë, "Flower of the West"). - Ar-Zimrahil / Ar-Zimraphel — Adûnaic zimra "jewel" + -phel / -hil, probably "-daughter" or a general feminine suffix (the suffix is not glossed by Tolkien; treat as inferred). This is an element-for-element calque of the Quenya Míriel (mírë "jewel" + -iel "-daughter"). The precise point for the script: **Pharazôn did not erase her name, he translated it into the language of the new regime.* Her earliest name of all was the Quenya Tar-Ilien* (HoME V). - Zigûr — Adûnaic zigûr "wizard," used flatly as Sauron's name in the Mannish tradition (Sauron Defeated 247, 250, 311, 345); subjective form Zigûrun. The register is the point: to Númenor he was not "the Abhorred," he was the Wizard. His Quenya self-styling, from a single note in Parma Eldalamberon 17 p. 183, was Mairon "the Admirable" and Tar-Mairon "King Excellent" — the Númenórean royal prefix Tar- on a Maia's name, i.e. he was calling himself a rival king of Númenor. (One sentence in one source; flag it as thin if used.) - The Adûnaic case joke — get this the right way round. From Lowdham's Report (Sauron Defeated p. 429): *"When two or more nouns in apposition are juxtaposed in Adûnaic only the last of the series receives the subjective inflexion: thus Ar-Pharazôn kathuphazgânun = 'King Ar-Pharazôn the Conqueror'. Contrast Ar-Pharazônun kathuphazgân = 'King Ar-Pharazôn **is (was) a Conqueror*'." Moving one suffix -un turns a title into a claim. Also attested from the same corpus: Ar-Pharazônun Bâr 'nAnadûnê "King Pharazôn is Lord of Anadûnê," and *Ar-Pharazônun azaggara Avalôiyada* "Ar-Pharazôn was warring against the Powers." - Alcarondas / Aglarrâma — both glossed by Tolkien "Castle of the Sea," and **neither contains any element meaning "sea"* (Quenya "sea" is ëar). Alcarondas visibly contains alcar* "glory," and possibly rondo "vaulted chamber, dome"; proposed literal readings include "Castle of Glory," "Glorious Castle," and "Dome of Glory." Even the language is unsettled — Eldamo states outright that "the language of the name is unclear," and the final element of the earlier Aglarrâma has no accepted meaning at all. **The gloss is Tolkien's; every literal etymology is scholars'. Do not assert "Quenya" or a literal meaning on screen without the hedge.** - Nimloth — Sindarin "White Blossom"; Quenya equivalent Ninquelótë, a name of Telperion. - Anadûnê (Adûnaic) / Númenórë (Quenya) "Westernesse"; Yôzayan "Land of Gift" = Andor; Elenna "Starwards"; Akallabêth (Adûnaic) "the Downfallen," rendered in Quenya as Atalantë — Tolkien's celebrated near-accident with Atlantis, the root talat- "to slip, fall down" being genuinely part of his invented Quenya. - Meneltarma "Pillar of the Heavens"; Noirinan "Valley of the Tombs"; Armenelos "royal-heaven-fortress"; Rómenna from rómen "east, sunrise"; Andúnië from andúnë "sunset, west."

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Additional Context

Ar-Pharazôn's position was constitutionally weak, and he knew it. Tar-Aldarion had changed the law so that the eldest child inherited "whether man or woman." That law is why Míriel was queen and why Pharazôn's only route to the sceptre ran through her. It is also why the Lords of Andúnië had a claim of their own: Christopher prints a note Tolkien wrote and he then cut — "in their line the sceptre would indeed have descended had the law been in his day as it was later made," because Silmariën was older than her brother Meneldur. Númenor had two rival readings of its own succession law, and Pharazôn's marriage killed the argument by absorbing it.

He inherited a purge, he did not invent one. Ar-Gimilzôr had already forbidden the Elven-tongues, punished those who welcomed Eressëan ships, and forcibly relocated the Elendili from the west of the island to the east, "and there they were watched." Ar-Adûnakhôr, three kings earlier, had begun the persecution. Pharazôn's innovation was not repression; it was liturgy — making the repression a religion with an altar.

Sauron's arrival changed the Númenórean economy, not just its theology. "For with the aid and counsel of Sauron they multiplied their possessions, and they devised engines, and they built ever greater ships. And they sailed now with power and armoury to Middle-earth, and they came no longer as bringers of gifts, nor even as rulers, but as fierce men of war." Pharazôn's Númenor was materially richer and militarily stronger than Tar-Palantir's. This matters: nothing in the fifty-seven years of Sauron's residence looked like decline from the inside. "Nonetheless for long it seemed to the Númenóreans that they prospered, and if they were not increased in happiness, yet they grew more strong, and their rich men ever richer."

Amandil's embassy is a deliberate, failed re-run of Eärendil's. Eärendil sailed west and moved the Valar to make war on Morgoth. Amandil sails west with three servants and vanishes. The Akallabêth's verdict is one of the coldest sentences Tolkien wrote: "Men could not a second time be saved by any such embassy, and for the treason of Númenor there was no easy absolving." Amandil says goodbye "as one that is about to die" and tells his household, "it may well prove that you will see me never again; and that I shall show you no such sign as Eärendil showed long ago."

Elendil is defined by refusal. He is not a rebel; he is a man who declines a royal summons. "Elendil had remained in Rómenna, refusing the summons of the King when he set forth to war; and avoiding the soldiers of Sauron that came to seize him and drag him to the fires of the Temple, he went aboard his ship and stood off from the shore, waiting on the time."

What Ar-Pharazôn's reign produced, historically. Gondor and Arnor exist because of him. The Black Númenóreans — the men who "built in their fortresses temples and great tombs" on the Middle-earth coasts and enslaved its peoples — are his colonial administration outliving the metropole; the Mouth of Sauron and the Corsairs of Umbar are his afterlife. Aragorn's kingship, Isildur's Tree, the palantíri in Gondor, and the whole shape of the Third Age are downstream of choices made by a man who wanted to live forever.

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Questions for Further Research

- The missing six years, 3255–3261. Tolkien records nothing between the seizure and the sailing. What did a usurper do with his first six years? Unanswerable from the text; flag as a gap rather than filling it. - When exactly was Nimloth felled? The Akallabêth dates none of the middle events. It falls somewhere in the 3262–3310 window; Isildur and Anárion are "then young men by the reckoning of Númenor." - Did Ar-Pharazôn ever learn about the Ring? Tolkien: "I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring" — a judgement, not a statement in the narrative. - What did Míriel do for sixty-four years? The published text gives her one sentence at the beginning and one at the end. The abandoned drafts give her a personality and a fiancé. That silence is itself the most interesting fact about her. - Where is Ar-Pharazôn now? The Caves of the Forgotten, "until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom." Tolkien's eschatology (the Dagor Dagorath) is itself non-canonical in the published Silmarillion; note carefully.

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Discrete Analytical Themes

Theme 1: The Manufactured Golden Man — legitimacy bought abroad

Core idea: Before he was a king, Pharazôn built a public reputation out of foreign war and distributed plunder, and that manufactured popularity — not the law — is what made his usurpation possible. Evidence: - "He had fared often abroad, as a leader in the wars that the Númenóreans made then in the coastlands of Middle-earth, seeking to extend their dominion over Men; and thus he had won great renown as a captain both by land and by sea." (Akallabêth) - "Therefore when he came back to Númenor, hearing of his father's death, the hearts of the people were turned to him; for he brought with him great wealth, and was for the time free in his giving." (Akallabêth) — note the "for the time." - "though he had courage and strength of will rather than of wisdom, as after appeared, when he was corrupted by the counsels of his father, and the acclaim of the people." (PoME, "History of the Akallabêth," text (c)) - Gimilkhâd, his father, died in 3243, twelve years before the accession; Ar-Gimilzôr "would fain have appointed his Heir, had the laws allowed" (UT). Pharazôn inherited a faction leadership without inheriting his father's defeat. - Appendix B, 3175: "Repentance of Tar-Palantir. Civil war in Númenor" — the country he came home to was already split. Distinction: This is about the PRE-REGNAL POLITICAL MACHINE — reputation, plunder, faction inheritance. It contains no Sauron, no Míriel, no religion. It answers "how does a man with no legal claim become the obvious choice?"

Theme 2: Marrying the Constitution — the usurpation as a legal manoeuvre

Core idea: Ar-Pharazôn did not overthrow Númenor's succession law; he found the one move that neutralised it, and Tolkien scores it as a double crime — against a person and against a statute. Evidence: - "to her now by right and the laws of the Númenóreans came the sceptre. But Pharazôn took her to wife against her will, doing evil in this and evil also in that the laws of Númenor did not permit the marriage, even in the royal house, of those more nearly akin than cousins in the second degree." (Akallabêth) - "she was the child of his father's brother" (UT, "The Line of Elros") — first cousins, exactly the degree prohibited. Míriel b. 3117, Pharazôn b. 3118: she was one year his senior. - "And when they were wedded, he seized the sceptre into his own hand… and the name of his queen he changed to Ar-Zimraphel." The renaming is the second seizure. - Appendix A: "His daughter should have been the fourth Queen, Tar-Míriel, but the King's nephew usurped the sceptre" — and elsewhere calls him "leader of the rebellion," never mentioning the marriage at all. - Appendix A note: "The sceptre of Númenor is said to have perished with Ar-Pharazôn." The object he married to obtain went down with him; the sceptre Aragorn receives is the rod of the Lords of Andúnië — Amandil's line, not his. - Variant, PoME p. 160: "she was glad… being enamoured of Pharazôn… she yielded the sceptre to Pharazôn… but she retained also her title as hers by right." Distinction: This is about the SPECIFIC LEGAL/DYNASTIC ACT of 3255 and Míriel's erasure — not about how he got popular (T1) and not about anything Sauron did.

Theme 3: Umbar — the victory that was a surrender in disguise

Core idea: The proudest moment of Ar-Pharazôn's life was a transaction he lost while believing he had won it, and Tolkien says so in his own voice outside the fiction. Evidence: - Dates: sails 3261, Sauron in Númenor 3262 (App. B). Umbar had been "a great fortress of Númenor" since 2280 — he landed in his own harbour, 981 years established. - The theatre: "For seven days he journeyed with banner and trumpet, and he came to a hill… and the tents of his host were ranged all about him, blue, golden, and white, as a field of tall flowers. Then he sent forth heralds, and he commanded Sauron to come before him and swear to him fealty. **And Sauron came.*" (Akallabêth*) - Appendix A: "So great was the might and splendour of the Númenóreans that **Sauron's own servants deserted him; and Sauron humbled himself, doing homage, and craving pardon. Then Ar-Pharazôn in the folly of his pride** carried him back as a prisoner." - Letter 211: "Ar-Pharazôn… conquered a terrified Sauron's subjects, not Sauron." / "Sauron's personal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning: he got free transport to Númenor!" / "**He naturally had the One Ring**, and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the Númenóreans." / "I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring." - The hostage decision in his own head: "it came into his mind that, for the better keeping of Sauron… he should be brought to Númenor… **To this Sauron assented as one constrained, yet in his secret thought he received it gladly, for it chimed indeed with his desire.**" - The monument: a white pillar with a crystal globe raised above Umbar to commemorate the humbling, "thrown down" when Umbar fell to Sauron's servants (App. A, Gondor). Distinction: This is the SINGLE MILITARY EVENT and its inversion — the one section where the King is at the height of his competence and it is precisely his competence that ruins him. It stops at the gangplank; the corruption is T4.

Theme 4: Three Years to the Inner Room — how a court gets captured

Core idea: The takeover was not slow, was not mystical, and did not require force; it required flattery, exclusive knowledge, and a council that took its cue from the King. Evidence: - "ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King; for flattery sweet as honey was ever on his tongue, and knowledge he had of many things yet unrevealed to Men." (Akallabêth) - "And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save one alone, Amandil lord of Andúnië." The court did not fall to Sauron; it fell to the King's preference. - Amandil was Pharazôn's boyhood friend and stayed on the council "until the coming of Sauron." "Now he was dismissed, for Sauron hated him above all others in Númenor. But he was so noble… that neither the King nor Sauron dared to lay hands on him as yet." - The conversion happens in a room, not a temple: "And Ar-Pharazôn said: '**Who is the Lord of the Darkness?' Then behind locked doors** Sauron spoke to the King, and he lied." - Appendix B labels the whole period administratively: "**3262–3310 Sauron seduces the King and corrupts the Númenóreans**" — 48 years of process bracketed by one clause. - The end state: "though in truth Sauron ruled all from behind the throne." Distinction: This is the MECHANISM of the inversion — a case study in institutional capture, told in the language of courts and counsellors. It is not the event at Umbar (T3) and not the religious programme that follows (T6).

Theme 5: Nimloth — killing the thing he still half-believed

Core idea: The felling of the White Tree is the one place where Tolkien shows Ar-Pharazôn's residual faith, and shows him overriding it — which makes it a better index of his fall than anything he says. Evidence: - Tar-Palantir "prophesied, saying that when the Tree died then the line of Kings also would perish." (UT; also Akallabêth) - "**At the first the King would not assent to this, since he believed that the fortunes of his house were bound up with the Tree**, as was forespoken by Tar-Palantir. Thus in his folly he who now hated the Eldar and the Valar vainly clung to the shadow of the old allegiance of Númenor." - The tree was guarded "day and night by guards in his service," and approach was "forbidden to all by the orders of Sauron"; the courts themselves were "now forbidden to the Faithful." - Isildur's raid: Nimloth "was dark and bore no bloom, for it was late in the autumn"; he "took from the Tree a fruit that hung upon it… fought his way out, receiving many wounds"; and "when its first leaf opened then Isildur, who had lain long and come near to death, arose and was troubled no more by his wounds." - Cause and effect: "None too soon was this done; for after the assault the King yielded to Sauron and felled the White Tree, and turned then wholly away from the allegiance of his fathers." The theft is what tipped him. - The wood was not discarded: "the first fire upon the altar Sauron kindled with the hewn wood of Nimloth… men marvelled at the reek that went up from it, so that the land lay under a cloud for seven days." Distinction: This is about BELIEF AND SUPERSTITION — the last thing he was afraid of, and the fact that he did it anyway, out of pique. The Temple's architecture and the sacrifices are T6; this is the psychology of the single decision.

Theme 6: The Temple and the Charge Sheet — governing by liturgy and libel

Core idea: Ar-Pharazôn replaced Númenor's entire religious constitution with an inverted one, and ran the persecution through fabricated political charges rather than open religious ones. Evidence: - What he abolished: the Meneltarma had "no building, no raised altar, not even a pile of undressed stones… and no other likeness of a temple did the Númenóreans possess in all the days of their grace, until the coming of Sauron," and "none might speak any word, save the King only," three times a year (Erukyermë, Erulaitalë, Eruhantalë) (UT, "A Description of the Island of Númenor"). Ar-Pharazôn "would let no man, upon pain of death, ascend to it" — abolishing the one sacred function that was his alone to perform. - What he built: "in the form of a circle at the base… walls fifty feet in thickness… **five hundred feet across the centre… rose from the ground five hundred feet**… crowned with a mighty dome… roofed all with silver… but soon the light was darkened, and the silver became black," with "an altar of fire in the midst" and "a louver, whence there issued a great smoke." - The judicial mechanics: "**most often from among the Faithful they chose their victims; yet never openly on the charge that they would not worship Melkor**… rather was cause sought against them that they hated the King and were his rebels, or that they plotted against their kin, devising lies and poisons. **These charges were for the most part false; yet those were bitter days, and hate brings forth hate.**" - The result was the opposite of the promise: "**for all this Death did not depart from the land, rather it came sooner and more often**… now madness and sickness assailed them… And men took weapons in those days and slew one another for little cause." - Prosperity as camouflage: "**Nonetheless for long it seemed to the Númenóreans that they prospered**… they multiplied their possessions, and they devised engines, and they built ever greater ships… and they came no longer as bringers of gifts, nor even as rulers, but as fierce men of war." - DA's version puts the neglect on the King directly, pre-Sauron: "**But he Ar-Pharazôn the king fell into doubt, and in his day the offering of the first-fruits was neglected**." Distinction: This is DOMESTIC POLICY — architecture, law, terror, and the economics of a regime that felt successful from inside. Not the single decision about the Tree (T5), not the final war (T8).

Theme 7: The Loophole King — "to go behind a command is not to keep it"

Core idea: Long before he broke the Ban openly, Ar-Pharazôn tried to evade it by argument — and this reveals a man whose relationship to rules was lawyerly, not defiant, which is why the final breach took him fifty years. Evidence: - His own reasoning in council (The Drowning of Anadûnê, HoME IX): "'For if we shall believe this,' he said, 'that one who goeth west shall return out of the East, then shall it not also be that one who goeth ever east shall come up at last behind the West, and yet break no ban?'" - Amandil's/Aphanuzir's reply, added in a later revision: "**Yet to go behind a command is not to keep it.**" - His fallback when the loophole fails is infrastructure, not repentance: "he pondered in his secret thought **the building of ships of great draught and burden, and the setting up of outposts of his power upon far shores**." - The Valar's messengers had already refuted the premise of the whole project: "**it is not the land of Aman that maketh its people deathless, but the dwellers therein do hallow the land; and there you should rather wither the sooner, as moths in a flame too bright and hot.**" - Sauron's final pitch is pitched to exactly this temperament — as an entitlement claim, not a rebellion: "against all justice is it done that this gift, which is his due, should be withheld from the King of Kings… But great kings do not brook denials, and take what is their due" (Akallabêth); Appendix A's version: "But great Kings take what is their right." - Variant note: in DA the Valar teach a round world and Sauron denies it; in the Akallabêth the world is flat until Ilúvatar changes it. The nature of Ar-Pharazôn's error changes with the cosmology. Distinction: This is about his RELATIONSHIP TO LAW AND ARGUMENT — the man as sophist, working the rule before he broke it. It draws almost entirely on the Mannish-tradition text, so it is textually distinct from every other theme as well as conceptually distinct.

Theme 8: Nine Years, Every Warning, and One Moment of Doubt

Core idea: The Great Armament was not an impulse; it was a nine-year public works programme carried out against an escalating series of unmistakable signs, and it nearly failed at the last minute for one human reason. Evidence: - Nine years of building: begun 3310, sailed 3319 (App. B). Nine years is the span; the fleet's size is never numbered — "like an archipelago of a thousand isles" is a simile, not a count. - The warnings, in order: ships founder that never foundered before ("such a grief had not till then befallen them since the rising of the Star"); storm-clouds shaped as eagles with "lightning beneath their wings"; lightning killing men "upon the hills, and in the fields, and in the streets of the city"; a bolt that "smote the dome of the Temple and shore it asunder" while Sauron "stood there upon the pinnacle and defied the lightning and was unharmed — and in that hour men called him a god"; and finally "smoke issued from the peak of the Meneltarma. **But all the more did Ar-Pharazôn press on with his armament.**" - The King's public line, ghost-written: "'The Lords of the West have plotted against us. They strike first. The next blow shall be ours!' **These words the King himself spoke, but they were devised by Sauron.**" - The departure: "he went aboard his mighty ship, Alcarondas, Castle of the Sea. Many-oared it was and many-masted, golden and sable… in that hour the trumpets of Númenor outrang the thunder" — and it was rowed by "many strong slaves… beneath the lash." - The hesitation: "For Ar-Pharazôn wavered at the end, and almost he turned back. His heart misgave him when he looked upon the soundless shores and saw Taniquetil shining, whiter than snow, colder than death… But pride was now his master." - The sentence: "buried under falling hills: there it is said that they lie imprisoned in the **Caves of the Forgotten, until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom." Doom fell "on the nine and thirtieth day since the passing of the fleets" (Akallabêth) — "on the seventh evening*" in The Drowning of Anadûnê*. - The coda: Sauron "had laughed when he heard the trumpets of Ar-Pharazôn sounding for battle; and again he had laughed when he heard the thunder of the storm; and a third time… he was taken in the midst of his mirth." Distinction: This is the FINAL DECISION SEQUENCE — the deliberate, resourced, warned-against project and the one instant of doubt inside it. It is the payoff of T1 (pride), T4 (whose words he was speaking), and T7 (why he finally stopped arguing and just sailed).

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Compelling Quotes for Narration

1. "And Sauron came. Even from his mighty tower of Barad-dûr he came, and made no offer of battle." 2. "Sauron's personal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning: he got free transport to Númenor!" — Letter 211 3. "To this Sauron assented as one constrained, yet in his secret thought he received it gladly, for it chimed indeed with his desire." 4. "Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth… that ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King." 5. "And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save one alone, Amandil lord of Andúnië." 6. "At the first the King would not assent to this, since he believed that the fortunes of his house were bound up with the Tree." 7. "These charges were for the most part false; yet those were bitter days, and hate brings forth hate." 8. "Thus Ar-Pharazôn, King of the Land of the Star, grew to the mightiest tyrant that had yet been in the world since the reign of Morgoth, though in truth Sauron ruled all from behind the throne." 9. "These words the King himself spoke, but they were devised by Sauron." 10. "But all the more did Ar-Pharazôn press on with his armament." 11. "Their masts were as a forest upon the mountains, and their sails like a brooding cloud; and their banners were golden and black." 12. "For Ar-Pharazôn wavered at the end, and almost he turned back… But pride was now his master." 13. "There it is said that they lie imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten, until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom." 14. "Too late she strove to ascend the steep ways of the Meneltarma to the holy place; for the waters overtook her, and her cry was lost in the roaring of the wind." 15. "Yet to go behind a command is not to keep it." — Amandil, The Drowning of Anadûnê 16. "The memorial of his humiliation was thrown down." — Appendix A, on the white pillar at Umbar

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Visual Elements to Highlight

- A war fleet's scarlet-and-gold sails rising out of the sunset while coastal villages empty. - The pavilion on the hill inland from Umbar: blue, golden and white tents "as a field of tall flowers" ringing a throne set in open country, and a single figure walking in alone. - The White Tree in late autumn, dark and flowerless, ringed by guards; a hooded figure taking one fruit. - A 500-foot dome of silver going black from the inside, smoke rising from a louver at its crown. - Storm-clouds in the shape of eagles with lightning under their wings, spread from north to south over a city. - Lightning splitting the Temple dome with one figure standing untouched on the pinnacle. - Alcarondas: many-oared, many-masted, golden and sable, a throne on the deck. - Taniquetil white and silent over a beach with a war host camped at the foot of an empty hill-city. - A green wave, plumed with foam, closing over a woman climbing a mountain road. - A white pillar with a crystal globe above a harbour — and, later, its broken shaft.

Sources: Ar-Pharazôn — The Last King of Númenor Who Chose to Invade Heaven

Tier 1 — Primary texts consulted in full or in substantial part

These were read as continuous text, not summarised from a wiki. Quotations in notes.md drawn from these are verbatim (OCR artefacts silently corrected — e.g. Pharaz6n → Pharazôn, Nimenor → Númenor, Iltivatar → Ilúvatar).

| Source | What was used | Weight | |---|---|---| | The Silmarillion — Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor | Read complete, from the reign of Ar-Gimilzôr through the founding of the Realms in Exile. Supplied ~90% of the direct quotation in the notes. | Most useful single source. | | The Lord of the Rings — Appendix A (I, i) "Númenor" | The alternative account: "leader of the rebellion," no mention of the marriage, "Sauron's own servants deserted him," "But great Kings take what is their right." | Very high — the key variant. | | The Lord of the Rings — Appendix A (I, iv) "Gondor" | The white pillar at Umbar and its destruction; "the memorial of his humiliation was thrown down." | High — underused detail. | | The Lord of the Rings — Appendix A, note on regalia | "The sceptre of Númenor is said to have perished with Ar-Pharazôn." | Medium. | | The Lord of the Rings — Appendix B, The Tale of Years (Second Age) | Every date in the timeline: 2280, 2350, 3175, 3255, 3261, 3262, 3262–3310, 3310, 3319, 3320. | Load-bearing for all dates. | | Unfinished Tales — "The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor" (+ Christopher's notes 12–16) | Birth/death/reign years for Ar-Gimilzôr, Gimilkhâd, Tar-Palantir, Ar-Pharazôn, Tar-Míriel; "the child of his father's brother"; the 3175/3177 discrepancy note; the attribution of the Akallabêth to Elendil. | Load-bearing for genealogy and ages. | | Unfinished Tales — "A Description of the Island of Númenor" | The Meneltarma: no building/altar/tool/weapon, silence, the King alone speaking, the Three Prayers (Erukyermë / Erulaitalë / Eruhantalë), the Witnesses of Manwë, Noirinan the Valley of the Tombs, Arandor, Rómenna, Armenelos, the eagle eyrie in the King's tower. | High — supplies the "before" against which the Temple is the negative. | | The History of Middle-earth XII — The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The History of the Akallabêth" (esp. pp. 153–165) | The three abandoned Míriel/Elentir drafts (a)(b)(c) and marginal note (d); "strength of will rather than of wisdom… corrupted by the counsels of his father, and the acclaim of the people"; Ar-Zimrahil vs Ar-Zimraphel; Aglarrâma → Alkarondas; twelve ships → nine and the "Four times three" margin note; Christopher's admitted "(incorrect)" king-count changes; the Umbar editorial change; the Ælfwine frame. | Most useful variant source. | | The History of Middle-earth IX — Sauron Defeated, "The Drowning of Anadûnê" (§§20–49 + commentary) | The Adûnaic name-set (Zigûr, Arbazân/Aphanuzîr, Nimruzîr, Azrabêl, Indilzar, Ar-Zimrahil, Arminalêth, Menel-tûbal, Yôzayan, Avalôi, Nimrî, Arûn-Mulkhêr); the round-world debate and Ar-Pharazôn's loophole argument; "Yet to go behind a command is not to keep it"; "in his day the offering of the first-fruits was neglected"; the seventh-evening interval; the destruction (not removal) of Aman; Christopher's 1946 memory of his father reading it aloud. | High — supplies Theme 7 almost single-handedly. |

Access note: the Akallabêth, LOTR appendices, Unfinished Tales, The Peoples of Middle-earth and Sauron Defeated were read from full-text scans/EPUBs hosted at the Internet Archive (archive.org). Identifiers used: TheSilmarillionIllustratedJ.R.R.TolkienTedNasmith, J.R.R.TolkienLordOfTheRingsThev5.0, j.-r.-r.-tolkien-unfinished-tales-the-lost-lore-of-middle-earth, the-peoples-of-middle-earth-vol-12, sauron-defeated-vol.-09.

Tier 2 — Primary text quoted at second hand (page numbers NOT verified)

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (ed. Carpenter). The printed volume was not accessible; every letter quotation in notes.md is attested through multiple independent secondary compilations and should be cited by letter number only, never with a page.

- Letter 211 (to Rhona Beare, 1958) — the crucial one. "Ar-Pharazôn… conquered a terrified Sauron's subjects, not Sauron." / "Sauron's personal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning: he got free transport to Númenor!" / "He naturally had the One Ring, and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the Númenóreans." / "I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring." - Attested at: https://lotrscrapbook.bookloaf.net/ref/letters_evil.html (compilation of Letters passages on Sauron and evil) and https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_211 - Letter 131 (to Milton Waldman, 1951) — "The particular 'myth' which lies behind this tale… is the Downfall of Númenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition"; the *Fall, Mortality and the Machine* formulation; the Ban as the necessary device "in a story of Men." - Letter 156 (to Fr Robert Murray, 1954) — "Sauron was defeated by a 'miracle': a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world, when appealed to by Manwë." - Letter 257 (to Christopher Bretherton, 1964) — the recurring Wave dream.

Tier 3 — Secondary and reference sources

| Source | URL | Used for | Reliability | |---|---|---|---| | Silmarillion Writers' Guild, "Character Biography: Ar-Pharazôn" (Russandol) | https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/reference/references/pf/ar-pharazon.php | Orientation; textual-variant summary (Angor → Tar-Kalion → Ar-Pharazôn); the Letter 211 Ring question | Good — fan scholarship with citations; everything used was re-verified against primary text | | Silmarillion Writers' Guild, "Character of the Month: Ar-Pharazôn" | https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/reference/characterofthemonth/ar-pharazon.php | Same; character analysis | Good | | Silmarillion Writers' Guild, Tar-Míriel article | https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/node/6591 | Míriel's lineage and the Lost Road variant where the queen falls with her husband | Good | | Tolkien Gateway (Ar-Pharazôn, Tar-Míriel, Alcarondas, The History of the Akallabêth, The Drowning of Anadûnê, Letter 211) | tolkiengateway.net | Cross-checking dates and names. NOTE: the site is Cloudflare-protected and cannot be fetched directly — reached only through search-result snippets | High reliability, low accessibility | | Anghraine (Tumblr), transcription of PoME p. 160 | https://anghraine.tumblr.com/post/59086544731/ | First pointer to the PoME Míriel passage — subsequently read in full from the primary text | Confirmed against primary | | historyofmiddleearth.weebly.com, "Sauron Defeated: The Drowning of Anadûnê" | https://historyofmiddleearth.weebly.com/home/sauron-defeated-the-drowning-of-anadune | Orientation on DA's departures from the Akallabêth | Fair — used only as a pointer | | Tea with Tolkien, Akallabêth chapter guide | https://www.teawithtolkien.com/blog/akallabeth | Orientation | Fair | | Reactor (Tor.com), "A Second Age Primer" | https://reactormag.com/a-second-age-primer-the-rings-of-power-the-rise-and-fall-of-numenor-and-the-last-alliance/ | Popular framing of the Second Age | Fair | | Encyclopedia of Arda (glyphweb.com) | https://www.glyphweb.com/arda/ | Cross-reference (Alcarondas) | Good | | Dimitra Fimi, "On Tolkien's Letter 131" (Substack series) | https://dimitrafimi.substack.com/p/on-tolkiens-letter-131-2-incarnate | Scholarly context on Letter 131 | Strong — Fimi is a working Tolkien academic | | A Pilgrim in Narnia, "J.R.R. Tolkien's Texts on the (Down)Fall of Númenor" | https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2022/10/27/... | Bibliography of the Númenor texts (403 to fetch; used via search snippet) | Fair |

Tier 3b — Scholarship

| Source | Where | Used for | Note | |---|---|---|---| | Alastair Whyte, "Many a Tale of Dread: The Dystopian Interface of Totalitarianism and Colonial Imperialism in the Númenor Narratives of J.R.R. Tolkien" | Journal of Language, Literature and Culture 67.2–3 (2020): 83–96 — https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20512856.2020.1849943 | The political reading. Domestic tyranny and overseas empire as one phenomenon | Peer-reviewed; paywalled (abstract only consulted) | | Pamina Fernández Camacho, "Elven-Latin and Semitic Adûnaic: Linguistic, Religious, and Political Strife in Tolkien's Island of Númenor" | Journal of Inklings Studies 13.1 (2023) — https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/ink.2023.0176 | Númenor as Carthaginian thalassocracy; Melkor/Melqart; Adûnaic vs "Elven-Latin" Quenya as confessional politics | Peer-reviewed; authorship inferred from search adjacency — confirm before naming on screen | | Verlyn Flieger, A Question of Time (Kent State UP, 1997); Interrupted Music (2005) | https://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/a-question-of-time.htm | Dunne's Experiment with Time; the Atlantis complex; the immram frame | Book-length; the circulating "Flieger 72" page cite could not be verified — paraphrase | | Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth | via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BAmenor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_and_fall_in_Middle-earth | Philology as engine (Ælfwine → Elendil); "asterisk-reality"; the Changing of the World; Deor | No Shippey passage on Ar-Pharazôn as a character exists — do not imply one | | Eric Schweicher, "Aspects of the Fall in The Silmarillion" | Mythlore 21.2 (1996) | The Ban as Eden's prohibition | Peer-reviewed | | Charles Delattre, "Númenor et l'Atlantide: une écriture en héritage" | Revue de littérature comparée (2007) | Point-by-point Plato parallels | Peer-reviewed; consulted via summary | | Giuseppe Pezzini | Thersites (2022) | Hesiod/Ovid decline tradition; Tolkien's own "Númenor-Atlantis" compound | Peer-reviewed | | Bradley J. Birzer, entry in Drout (ed.), The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2006) | — | "Every story was essentially about a fall" | Reference work | | Marjorie Burns, Mythlore (1989) | — | The Norse/doom counter-reading against Christian providence | Peer-reviewed | | John Garth, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien (2020) | https://johngarth.co.uk/php/worlds_of_jrr_tolkien.php | Babylonian/Egyptian/Assyrian/Old Testament sediment | Trade scholarship | | John Bowers, Tolkien's Lost Chaucer (OUP) | — | Tolkien's documented reading of Gibbon | Academic monograph | | Charles W. Nelson, "The Sins of Middle-earth" (2000) | https://www.enotes.com/topics/lord-rings/criticism/criticism/charles-w-nelson-essay-date-2000 | Medieval seven-sins lens | His examples are from LOTR, not the Akallabêth — don't attribute a Númenor reading | | Russandol, "So, who was Ar-Pharazôn?" (SWG Character of the Month) | https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/reference/characterofthemonth/ar-pharazon.php | Best character study found at any level | Fan scholarship — label as such | | K.R. Harriman, "Biblical and Theological Commentary on Sauron Defeated" | https://krharriman.substack.com/p/biblical-and-theological-commentary-b83 | Idolatry sequence; Sauron-as-serpent; SD 347 and SD 365 citations | Serious blog — label as such | | Ben Reinhard, "Númenor and the Decline of America" | https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/numenor-and-the-decline-of-america | Decline sequence; the Faithful as enemies of the state | Academic author, opinion venue | | Andrew Ray Williams, "Twice-Told Tales" | https://www.pastortheologians.com/articles/2025/8/25/twice-told-tales | Letter 131's "Machine" applied | Religious commentary | | Andreas Moehn ("Lalaith"), "An Interpretation of the Names in the Line of Elros" | https://lalaithmesp.blogspot.com/p/an-interpretation-of-names-in-line-of.html | Rigorous neo-Adûnaic reading of the regnal names | Best free linguistic treatment; explicitly conjectural in places | | Eldamo / Parf Edhellen | https://eldamo.org , https://www.elfdict.com | pharaz, zigûr, Alcarondas, Zimraphel, Calion, the Adûnaic phrase index | Standard reference corpora for Tolkien's languages | | Tolkien Estate, full text of the letter to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964 (Letter 257) | https://www.tolkienestate.com/letters/letter-to-christopher-bretherton-a-reader-16-july-1964/ | Verbatim Letter 257 — the only letter quoted from an authoritative published text | Authoritative |

Sources blocked to fetching this session (403): tolkiengateway.net, reactormag.com, tandfonline.com, euppublishing.com, scholar.valpo.edu (Journal of Tolkien Research), phuulishfellow.wordpress.com, apilgriminnarnia.com. Jeff LaSala's Reactor essays ("A Farewell to Kings: The Fall of Númenor," "Grace Under Pressure: The Rise of Númenor") are strong popular writing and would need a browser rather than WebFetch.

Leads that went nowhere: Nicholas Birns (his Mythlore work is on Radagast and the Scouring), Jason Fisher, and Michael Drout (who appears only as editor of the encyclopedia containing Birzer's entry). Do not cite any of the three on the Downfall.

Internal project sources

- production/episodes/nmenor-the-downfallen-isle/research/notes.md — the Feb 2026 Númenor episode's research. Consulted to avoid overlap: that episode covered the Ban, the Meneltarma, the Atlantis/dream material, Elros and the early kings, and the Downfall as an event. This episode should stay on Ar-Pharazôn's decisions. Where the two overlap (the Temple, the Armament), this research deliberately foregrounds different specifics — the charge sheet against the Faithful, the nine-year build, the wavering at Taniquetil, the Umbar pillar.

Page ranges / locations actually used

- The Silmarillion, Akallabêth — from "For Ar-Gimilzôr the twenty-third king…" through "…and is no more" (roughly Sil. pp. 267–282 in standard pagination). - Unfinished Tales — "A Description of the Island of Númenor," section on the Mittalmar and Meneltarma; "The Line of Elros," entries XXII–XXV and notes 12–16 (UT pp. ~220–228). - The Peoples of Middle-earth — "The History of the Akallabêth," §§30–83 commentary and the "Note on the marriage of Míriel and Pharazôn," pp. ~153–165. - Sauron Defeated — "The Drowning of Anadûnê," §§20–49 and Christopher's commentary on §§26–28 and §§46–48. - LOTR — Appendix A I(i) "Númenor"; Appendix A I(iv) "Gondor" (the Kin-strife / Umbar passage); Appendix A note on the crown and sceptre; Appendix B, Second Age.

Gaps and things that could not be sourced

- The printed Letters volume. Letter quotations are second-hand (see Tier 2). If any letter is quoted on screen, verify against a physical copy first. - Tolkien Gateway could not be fetched directly (Cloudflare); its content reached only via search snippets. Nothing in the notes rests on Gateway alone. - The Fall of Númenor (2022, ed. Brian Sibley) was not consulted — it is a compilation of the material above rather than new text, but it is the tidiest single-volume citation if one is wanted. - HoME V, The Lost Road was not read directly; the Angor/Istar and Tar-kalion/Tar-ilien layers come from Tier 3 sources plus Christopher's back-references in Sauron Defeated and PoME. Treat the earliest-draft names as attested-but-unverified.