[Shelob]

Phantom may be on to something...

Looking solely at the numbers 0-9, because people use a base 10 system and those are the digits upon which everything else is based, the numbers which tend to catch the eye/mind most are the odd numbers and 2. Ignoring 2 and looking just at the odd numbers I think it makes sense for 7 and 3 to set themselves apart. Look at it this way:

1 -- oneself, holds importance because it is representative of the individual
3 -- ?
5 -- number of digits on one hand, an easy-to-work-with sensical number (as is 10: two sets of five, total number of fingers, base-10)
7 -- ?
9 -- three squared, three sets of three...

I know that 9's reason for being important is based off of 3 and 3 doesn't have a reason. But by dint of not holding any material specialness I think that 3 and 7 naturally take on a more spiritual significance...fearing what we don't know and all that. Taking that as true 9 (three sets of three) and concievably 49 (seven sets of seven) are of even more importance than just 3 and 7.

As for why 7 would be used-more-often/more-important than 3 my guess would be that it's bigger, people are always drawn towards big things (mountains for example) even if for no other reason than "because it's there".


...I'm thinking that that 2 I ignored earlier could be of some importance as well, not necesarily in Tolkiens work but in the way we tend to assign importance to other numbers...