# The Stone of Erech



## Urambo Tauro (Mar 11, 2005)

_The Return of the King_- _The Passing of the_ _Grey Company_ describes the Stone of Erech...


> ...upon the top stood a black stone, round as a great globe, the height of a man, though its half was buried in the ground.


Was the unburied height six feet (total diameter twelve feet)? Or was its diameter six feet (three feet above ground)?


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## Valandil (Mar 11, 2005)

I always took it as the former - total diameter 12' or so (maybe 12'-8" or more - if we go with the Numenorean standard of 'man-high' found in UT). Also - this could have beena vague approximation, not a precise measure (doubtful anyone took a tape measure to it at this point in the story).

It was a big rock! Must've been quite a feat to bring it up from the coast. I prefer to think it came from the Meneltarma on Numenor.


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## Alcuin (Mar 12, 2005)

I’ve had a lot of trouble with the Stone of Erech, too. I think it must be six feet in diameter, and three feet of it is above the ground; but the descriptive passage, while beautiful, is so vague that others may envision a 12-foot diameter stone with 6 feet above ground, as I did at first.

The reason I settled on a smaller stone is that Isildur transported it his aboard ship in the ruin of Númenor. I think a 12-foot diameter stone would be too big for the Elf-Friends to haul aboard their ship outside Rómenna while Ar-Pharazôn and even Sauron were probably spying on them. It would have taken up a lot of room, too, but perhaps it could have been part of the ballast.

A 12-foot high globe of stone would weigh a tremendous amount, 8 times the weight of a 6-foot high globe of stone. Real-world measures may not mean much here, but a real 6-foot high stone globe would weigh over 6 tons. (That’s from the volume of a stone ball 3 feet in radius made of obsidian, a black volcanic glass. Black marble would weigh about 7 tons. Basalt is another black volcanic stone; it would weigh about 8 tons. If it were made from graphite, the “lead” in your pencil, it would weigh about the same as obsidian, but it would be very, very soft: maybe the Men of Dunharrow could have rubbed it out of existence over a few thousand years.) A 12-foot high stone would have 8 times as much volume and weigh 8 times as much.

That doesn’t mean that Tolkien cared about the volumes and densities of stone spheres, and if you imagine a bigger Stone of Erech when you read that passage, you’re probably in good company. I read all the references in _Lord of the Rings_, _Silmarillion_, and the _War of the Ring_ (book 3 of the _History of Middle-Earth_ series, where Christopher Tolkien goes through his father’s notes in writing that section of the Return of the King). I couldn’t find anything else that indicated how big Tolkien himself imagined the Stone of Erech.

I did find this, though. _Silmarillion_ states that Erech was considered one of the wonders of Númenórean work in Gondor, along with Orthanc, Aglarond, and the Argonath. In one early version of the story, Aragorn found an intact palantir in a vault in a tower there; the tower is missing in the final version in _Return of the King_. In another version, the Black Stone itself was apparently a palantir. Eventually, Tolkien abandoned the idea of having a palantir at Erech, but the Black Stone remained, however big it was.

Perhaps the passage was left deliberately vague so that imagination would work upon it. Read what you want into the description and enjoy it, but tell us what you see in the passage.


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## Snaga (Mar 12, 2005)

I have been curious about the Stone of Erech for a while. I wondered what its properties were that made it significant. I wondered if it had some power that allowed Isildur to curse the Oathbreakers. I have no evidence to support that though.


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## Alcuin (Mar 12, 2005)

Snaga said:


> I wondered what its properties were that made it significant. I wondered if it had some power that allowed Isildur to curse the Oathbreakers.


Exactly. Why bother to haul it out of Númenor at all? (“Darling, Los Angeles is sliding into the Pacific Ocean. Would you please be sure to put the grand piano in the minivan? Oh, and don’t forget Grandpa’s magic sword: you might need that.”) Who shaped it, the Dúnedain or the Eldar, or was it a natural sphere (and therefore Divinely fashioned)? Is there some implication here that although it came _from _Númenor, it did not originate _in _Númenor, but perhaps rather in Aman, and was a gift of the Eldar to the Dúnedain? That would make it worth taking to Middle-Earth, and might make it a terrible thing upon which to swear an oath, but there is no evidence for any of this speculation. 

Here's something else to ponder. It is _very_ unlikely to have originally have been called "The Stone of Erech" since it came from Númenor. In Appendix F of _RoTK_, Tolkien says that the word _Erech_ “descended … from the days before the ships of the Númenóreans sailed the Sea.” I read that section of Appendix F to mean the word _Erech_ is explicitly stated to be a pre-Númenórean Mannish name for a place in Middle-Earth where Isildur later set this peculiar stone. So I argue, *we don’t know the real name of the "Stone of Erech".*


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## Helm (Mar 18, 2005)

The wording of the quote makes me belive the top half was the hight of a man.


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## Alcuin (Mar 18, 2005)

Helm said:


> The wording of the quote makes me belive the top half was the hight of a man.


It was mine, too, Helm, as I admitted in my first post. Perhaps you’d like to set up a poll. You’d have to be careful how you word it; perhaps, “How high was the top half of the Stone of Erech?” 

A 12-foot stone (6 feet out of the ground) would be really heavy –about 50 tons or more (just over 49 tons for obsidian). If it were 2 _rangar_ high as Valandil suggests – the _ranga_ was the Númenórean equivalent of our yard, but a little longer, about 38 inches – or 6 feet 4 inches out of the ground, then the stone would be 12 feet 8 inches in diameter, an obsidian stone would weigh just shy of 58 tons. 

Again, Tolkien might not care about the weight of the thing. He said that people believed it had fallen from the sky. Maybe its enormous size convinced the local populace that it could not have been brought from over the sea.

But since it was so big, why was it so important that Isildur bring it out of Númenor in the first place? And can we ever know what Isildur called it, its real name?


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## Annaheru (Mar 18, 2005)

I don't think the size of the stone is a problem, based on my impressions from Akallabeth: Ar-Pharazon's ship was called 'castle of the sea', described as 'many masted'. A ship with multiple masts would probably be on the size scale of 18th century warships (100-200 ft), in any case it was big enough for the king to put his throne on the deck- given the size of the throne in Gondor (and the Numenorean must have been grander) that's no little stool. Granted, Elendil's ships almost certainly weren't on that scale, but as semi-royalty his ships were probably decent.

Also Akallabeth only mentions the 7 stones as having come from the Eldar when talking about the heirlooms they brought away. It does say they brought a lot of things that they'd made (not in any way conclusive, but I makes me tend to think that the Stone of Erech came from the same craft as Angrenost)

As to the size, the book says: "For upon the top stood a black stone, round as a great globe, the height of a man, _though_ its half was buried in the ground [emphasis added]." Normally the word 'though' is short for either 'although' or 'even though'. In either case the meaning would be: 'despite being half buried'.


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## Alcuin (Mar 18, 2005)

I don’t believe Orthanc came from Númenor. I believe that Tolkien indicates that it was fashioned on the spot. In addition, he says that the outer wall of Minas Tirith was “built ere the power and craft of Númenor waned in exile; and its outward face was like to the Tower of Orthanc, hard and dark and smooth, unconquerable by steel or fire, unbreakable except by some convulsion that would rend the very earth on which it stood.” Orthanc, I think, was a work of the Númenóreans in Middle-Earth on the stones of Middle-Earth, while the Stone of Erech is explicitly said to have been brought from Númenor by Isildur.

The 7 stones were the palantíri, and they were most unusual, fashioned perhaps by Fëanor himself. And granted while the texts do not say the Númenóreans brought other gifts of the Eldar with them from the Downfall, neither do they deny it. If the Eldar brought their friends many gifts – and the Faithful were the Dúnedain closest in friendship and geography to Tol Eressëa – then what the Eldar had brought them would be among the dearest of their possessions they would have sought to take with them.

But I think I have to agree with your interpretation of “though its half was buried in the ground.” I don’t like it, but I can’t refute it, so I concede.

That sure is a big stone!


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## Annaheru (Mar 18, 2005)

About Orthanc, I said they showed the same craft: yes Orthanc was built where it stood, but they had to learn how to build it somewhere- Numenor. The description of the Stone seems to match the description of Orthanc as to appearance, my point was that I thought the same know-how that went into Orthanc's construction could have earlier created the Stone (and even then the stone, or the skill, could have come from the Elves. I think that's a point that could only find an answer in an unknown JRR note somewhere.


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## Alcuin (Mar 19, 2005)

Your pardon, good Annaheru. I had ships on my mind, and I misinterpreted “craft.”


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## Annaheru (Mar 19, 2005)

no problem, easy to do


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## Urambo Tauro (Mar 19, 2005)

> ...round as a great globe, the height of a man, though its half was buried in the ground...


...could be read as, "this entire globe was as tall as a man, but half of this was in the ground." I can also imagine, "it was as tall as a man, but that was only half of it."
I really can see both options in the text... I don't know what to think! This is a real stumper.
I checked out Encyclopedia of Arda, which states that it had a six-foot diameter, but is that authoritative? Probably not... ...hmmm...


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## Alcuin (Mar 19, 2005)

I don't know. I've been reading the books at least once a year for over 30 years, and I don't know. I've looked at every reference I could find in _Letters_, in the _HoME_ series, and in the _War of the Ring_ (Tolkien's notes on writing _RotK_), and I can't say. 

I'm so confused! I think I'm having a panic attack! (Pant! pant! pant!)

Somebody set up a poll! "Does the Stone of Erech stand 6 feet tall or 3 feet tall?" Let the choices be 6 feet, 3 feet, and "some other height".


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## Valandil (Mar 19, 2005)

Alcuin said:


> It was mine, too, Helm, as I admitted in my first post. Perhaps you’d like to set up a poll. You’d have to be careful how you word it; perhaps, “How high was the top half of the Stone of Erech?”
> 
> A 12-foot stone (6 feet out of the ground) would be really heavy –about 50 tons or more (just over 49 tons for obsidian). If it were 2 _rangar_ high as Valandil suggests – the _ranga_ was the Númenórean equivalent of our yard, but a little longer, about 38 inches – or 6 feet 4 inches out of the ground, then the stone would be 12 feet 8 inches in diameter, an obsidian stone would weigh just shy of 58 tons.
> 
> ...



I still vote for the bigger size. I think it was held as sort of a great achievement that it was brought overland up to Erech. I don't think that would be such an accomplishment (not quite as 'mythic'  ) if it was only about 6' in diameter. I think Numenorean engineering could well have been up to the task of bringing a 12 footer up there - especially if we keep in mind the REAL mysteries of the ancients: building the pyramids, stonehenge, Easter Island, etc. I think Tolkien was just trying to assign the Stone of Erech that kind of place.


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## Greenwood (Mar 19, 2005)

Let me throw out another thought for consideratiion. The description of the stone would come from someone standing looking at it. "Round as a great globe ... though its half was buried in the ground", might just mean that the part of the stone above ground looked like a half-buriied sphere, i.e. spherical. It would not necessarily mean that anyone ever dug it out of the ground to confirm that it was indeed a perfect sphere. The other part of the description, "the height of a man", then just means the stone stood man high, or approximately six feet tall. We don't necessarily know how much of the stone is below ground. 

Just something to think about.


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## Helm (Mar 19, 2005)

Greenwood you said it for me. I want a poll, someone set one up (I don't know how.)


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## Aldanil (Mar 20, 2005)

*Despite What Ye May Have Been Told, Size Matters*

I think (and imagined, which came beforehand, and would reason, which follows) that the Stone of Erech *must* surely be the Larger of the two alternatives put forward in this thread's debate; as can be plainly understood IMHO by simple consideration of scale. The Morthond Vale about the Hill of Erech where Aragorn binds the Dead to his will is set among towering mountains: a stone standing only a little more than an English yard high wouldn't seem all that impressive in my own backyard in Virginia. Rocks of greater size adorn sculpted beds at the local Toyota dealership, and can be ordered at some cost from garden landscape centers. The Stone brought to Gondor out of the wrack of Numenor was no doubt wrought with wondrous skill, but it would hardly have appeared very prepossessing, no matter its unworldly surface, were it really no taller than my bedside pinewood chest of drawers. The thing's just gotta be BIG.


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## Helm (Mar 20, 2005)

*Re: Despite What Ye May Have Been Told, Size Matters*



Aldanil said:


> ...IMHO...


Can you tell me what this means?


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## Greenwood (Mar 20, 2005)

*Re: Despite What Ye May Have Been Told, Size Matters*



Helm said:


> Can you tell me what this means?


IMHO = In My Humble Opinion


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## Barliman Butterbur (Mar 20, 2005)

Urambo Tauro said:


> _The Return of the King_- _The Passing of the_ _Grey Company_ describes the Stone of Erech...
> 
> Was the unburied height six feet (total diameter twelve feet)? Or was its diameter six feet (three feet above ground)?



_If_ the stone was spherical, buried "half in the ground" and the half above measured six feet from ground to top, _then_ it had a twelve-foot diameter. That's just rudimentary geometry (radius = half a diameter).

Barley


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## Urambo Tauro (Mar 20, 2005)

*How Large Was the Stone of Erech?*

This poll was inspired by the The Stone of Erech thread.

_The Return of the King_- _The Passing of the_ _Grey Company_ describes the Stone of Erech...


> ...upon the top stood a black stone, round as a great globe, the height of a man, though its half was buried in the ground.


Tolkien gives us an interesting description, but it's not precisely specific. Either the entire stone was "the height of a man"(let's say, six feet), or the half seen above ground was six feet, giving us a diameter of twelve feet.
At the time of this post, we have not come across any official word to clarify. So what do you think? How large was the Stone of Erech?


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## Greenwood (Mar 21, 2005)

*Re: How Large Was the Stone of Erech?*

My choice is none of the above. Repeating my post from the other thread: 

The description of the stone would come from someone standing looking at it. "Round as a great globe ... though its half was buried in the ground", might just mean that the part of the stone above ground looked like a half-buriied sphere, i.e. spherical. It would not necessarily mean that anyone ever dug it out of the ground to confirm that it was indeed a perfect sphere. The other part of the description, "the height of a man", then just means the stone stood man high, or approximately six feet tall. We don't necessarily know how much of the stone is below ground. 

Thus, while I would say there was six feet of stone above ground, we don't really know what was below ground. The description is "round *as* a globe" [emphasis added]. It does not really say that the *whole* stone was globe shaped, just that the exposed portion of the stone looked like a half buried globe.


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## Valandil (Mar 21, 2005)

Alcuin said:


> :
> :
> A 12-foot high globe of stone would weigh a tremendous amount, 8 times the weight of a 6-foot high globe of stone. Real-world measures may not mean much here, but a real 6-foot high stone globe would weigh over 6 tons. (That’s from the volume of a stone ball 3 feet in radius made of obsidian, a black volcanic glass. Black marble would weigh about 7 tons. Basalt is another black volcanic stone; it would weigh about 8 tons. If it were made from graphite, the “lead” in your pencil, it would weigh about the same as obsidian, but it would be very, very soft: maybe the Men of Dunharrow could have rubbed it out of existence over a few thousand years.) A 12-foot high stone would have 8 times as much volume and weigh 8 times as much.
> :
> :



Of course now... it COULD have been hollow...  

Greenwood - yes, I saw yours, and it could have been only a half-sphere, but my inclination is that it was in fact spherical. (and, OTOH, it could have been 'egg-shaped' and LESS than half was showing above the ground!  Sorta like an iceberg or somethin')


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## Barliman Butterbur (Mar 21, 2005)

*What is your problem, people???!!  * Tolkien describes the Stone as a _globe._ That's a synonym for _sphere_, which is a symmetrical shape. That means _it's going to be the same *below* ground as above._ Tolkien further gives the _specific conditions:_ it is buried at the _midpoint._ That means it doesn't matter whether it is hollow, solid, feather-light or weighs tons. It has _not_ sunk because it _is_ buried at the midpoint.

I repeat: _if_ the *globe* has a 12-foot diameter _and_ is buried at the midpoint, _then_ what is exposed is six feet from top to bottom, _because_ the radius of a circle (or of a globe/sphere) is half its diameter! I'm sending you all back to Geometry 101!

Barley


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## Annaheru (Mar 21, 2005)

barley and I agree (who woulda thunk it), but it says sphere, and that means a ball. It says it was as tall as a man when half buried so that means its 12ft in dia.


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## Ithrynluin (Mar 21, 2005)

My, my. For me, this has to be one of _the_ most uninteresting Tolkien topics I can remember. But you guys seem to be enjoying it so keep at it.  And to each their own, of course. 

BTW, I merged the poll thread with the original thread, since they are so akin.


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## Urambo Tauro (Mar 23, 2005)

Barliman Butterbur said:


> ..._if_ the *globe* has a 12-foot diameter _and_ is buried at the midpoint, _then_ what is exposed is six feet from top to bottom, _because_ the radius of a circle (or of a globe/sphere) is half its diameter! I'm sending you all back to Geometry 101!


I thought this was so glaringly obvious, I was wondering why you even bothered posting this, Barley.
Ithrynluin- thanks for the thread merge! I was afraid I would have to follow _two_ threads on the same topic(I hate it when that happens!).
Personally, I like the imagery of the 12ft-diameter version. I hope it is what Tolkien had in mind.


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## Greenwood (Mar 23, 2005)

But the description does not say the stone *is* a globe. It says that the part of the stone exposed above ground is round *as* a globe that is half buried. This is not the same thing at all. I think the description of the stone, clearly indicates it stands six feet above ground. I do not think that it definitively tells us anything about the size or shape of the stone below ground.


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## Ellatur (Apr 22, 2005)

well. What is the stone supposed to be anyways? just a big ornament of extraordinary size that got buried under the ground as the soil accumulated around it?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jun 2, 2021)

Here's the result of following embedded links down the TTF rabbithole.

The Stone has always been an object of fascination for me, ever since my first reading. I'll say at once that my vote is for a 12-14 foot stone, for several reasons -- one has been mentioned: the mental image of Aragorn standing beside a stone that came up only waist-high is hardly awe-inspiring.

Secondly, given the abilities imputed repeatedly to the Numenoreans, I see no great difficulty in allowing them to transport such an object. Someone suggested ships like the larger ones of our 18th century, but in a recent thread concerning the numbers transported in Elendil's fleet, the possibility came up that they could have been of a size to rival those of the great Ming Dynasty treasure ships; a 12-foot stone would fit in one of those with no problem at all.

As to the question last posed by Ellatur, we have no way of knowing, unless a page turns up with the author's definitive answer. Whatever the "actual" size, shape, material, origin, or purpose, it was clearly an object considered valuable -- or meaningful -- enough to bring to Middle-earth.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, Tolkien's ideas for the Stone evolved in the course of writing, at one time being itself a palantir. Even after becoming the Stone as we have it, its location and function changed. I thought I had at one time posted an outline of the various changes it underwent, but perhaps that was one of the subjects I never got around to (along with that dratted "dragon" 😣). I'll have to look.

But I'll at least say here that the Stone was at one point seen by the author as a kind of memorial of the initial landing, and placed near the seashore. In later stages of the drafts, it was moved farther and farther inland, until it became the meeting-place of Isildur with the native men. There's more to it than that, of course -- at one point, it was brought, not by Isildur, but long before, by the first returning Numenoreans. But I'll leave it at that.

Oh, one more thing: Alcuin, you mentioned (16 years ago!) the references in _The War of the Ring_; there's another note, which Christopher brings up in _Sauron Defeated. _To make things even more confusing, this note, published in the later volume, dates earlier than at least some -- possibly all -- of the ones from the previous one. Apparently, it was discovered only after WR was published. Such are the vagaries of Tolkien research -- even for Christopher.


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## Ealdwyn (Jun 2, 2021)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> The Stone has always been an object of fascination for me, ever since my first reading. I'll say at once that my vote is for a 12-14 foot stone, for several reasons -- one has been mentioned: the mental image of Aragorn standing beside a stone that came up only waist-high is hardly awe-inspiring.



That's how I imagined it. Long before I'd read any other writings outside LotR, I'd pictured a tall standing stone, similar to those you'd find in the bronze age stone circles of northern Europe. It made sense to me that it would be ancient and mysterious.

Such as these 4,000 year stones in the Ring of Brodgar


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jun 2, 2021)

Except round, I hope. 😁


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## Ealdwyn (Jun 2, 2021)

Well, yes. A globe, but weathered and ancient.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jun 2, 2021)

I can see that, though, because of its mysterious nature, I always pictured it as remaining unmarred, a smooth black stone. That would have contributed to the "unearthly" aspect.


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## grendel (Jun 2, 2021)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> I can see that, though, because of its mysterious nature, I always pictured it as remaining unmarried, a smooth black stone. That would have contributed to the "unearthly" aspect.


Maybe the same stuff they used to build Orthanc?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jun 2, 2021)

Possibly, though from Tolkien's drawings, that looks to be volcanic rock, carved by the Numenoreans. That's what Fontsad took it to be, at least.

I was thinking more as like the palantiri, but on a much larger scale, of course. The impression was strengthened by later reading the article on them, where they're described as almost indestructible.

But certainly other conceptions are just as valid. Maybe we should rename it the "Rorschach Stone". 😁


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