AR-PHARAZÔN THE GOLDEN

The downfall of Ar-Pharazôn, the 25th and last king of Númenor, through the deceit of Sauron the Ring Lord may be compared to the biblical legend of that other Ring Lord, King Solomon. In the various tales and folklore that grew up around the biblical king over the centuries, there is a demon who resembles Sauron at his most guileful – the mighty Asmodeus, who gains possession of Soloman’s ring and corrupts the all-powerful but proud king of Israel.

Just as Sauron surrenders to Ar-Pharazôn and begs to be his trusted royal servant, so the demon Asmodeus in his guise as a trusted royal servant becomes Solomon’s evil tempter. Solomon is given visions of power and grandeur, and thus falls from Yahweh’s grace. He begins sacrificing to the gods of his various wives and builds a great temple to the goddess Ashtaroth on the slopes of Mount Moriah. This is comparable to Sauron’s temptation of Ar-Pharazôn with visions of conquest and immortality and the king’s fall from the grace of Eru the One. He builds a great temple to Morgoth on the slopes of Mount Meneltarma, where sacrifices are made to this evil “god”. Neither Yahweh nor Eru the One can be so mocked.

It is prophesied to Solomon that on his death the kingdom would be divided, his temple and his books destroyed, and the demons of disease and war released upon the world. The fate of Númenor is even more disastrous and all but identical to that of Atlantis, as described by the 1st-century AD Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo: “In one day and one night [Atlantis] was overwhelmed by the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies.”

In Tolkien’s cosmology, the sinking of Númenor also resulted in an entire world divided and transformed. Tolkien’s Arda is – at least in earlier versions – no longer the flat world bounded by Ekkaia, the Encircling Sea, akin to the Norse flat world of Midgard that was also bounded by an encircling sea. Tolkien called this the “Changing of the World” by which the mortal and immortal lands are forever sundered, and Middle-earth became the globe-like world that we now know as planet Earth.

Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor