[Man-of-the-Wold]

Thank you all for the gratifying debate.

The invisibility point was foolish. Sauron is the master of his Ring, and could certainly have controlled its effects, and conceivably, he could have bound it to his spirit as he shed physical form while escaping The Downfall. Mithrandir retained both Narya and Glamdring in a comparable situation after the Battle of the Peak.

As for the recent points of Elrian, I'd say that if Sauron had had the Ring when Numenor drowned, he could have saved himself and returned in much better form then he did. Nevertheless, as indicated in the "Silmarillion" and LOTR, he could be quite resourceful and effective even without the ring, which either did not exist or was lost for him when Isilidur finished him off. (As for the Nine, three had been great Numenorean lords, athough they were ensnared long before the advent of actual "Black Numenoreans." It would be interesting to know where the other six came from, probably kings and warrious among the Easterlings, Haradrim, possibly the Southmen of the White Mountains and Dunland, and much less likely Adunaic groups of the North.)

But still in trying to address Middle-Earth mysteries (as I am frequently compelled to do in response to my eight-year-old daughter’s insatiable and always insightful interrogations), I first give full force and meaning to whatever was actually committed to the main, completed publications (Silmarillion, Hobbit and LOTR), and then only secondarily use available, non-contradictory information from other sources about Tolkien’s work for filling in the blanks.

Returning to my quotation above, one must allow for Sauron to have at some point “put down” the Ring, in order that he could “take [it] up again.” Surely, after making it back to Barad-dur he didn’t just go on a ring-less holiday. Therefore, I still contend that it stayed behind at Barad-dur.

Then the question must be answered: Why might he have risked leaving it behind? For this, I submit that taking it to Numenor might have seemed much the greater risk, given Sauron’s position at the time. First, his assumptions regarding the Numenor had just been shattered by the immense force of the Armada. He was in great fear, and his surrendering was intended to avoid the Numenoreans defeating and destroying his power base, thus saving Mordor. He correctly realized that the Kings of Men were terribly powerful in ways even beyond shear military strength. Therefore, as a hostage of Ar-Pharazon he should have been anxious about keeping anything safe in his possession.

With Mordor no longer the concern of the Sea Kings, and the Middle-Earth Dunedain and Eldar not likely to challenge Mordor without the threat of Sauron (indeed after his return he had the freedom in his realm to mount an attack on Minas Ithil), the Ring would be quite safe there with the Ulairi as guards. They could no more take and use it, as you or I could use our lungs to eat. They were simply an extension of the ring’s power. If need be, they could have secreted it away, assuming Sauron didn’t institute other safeguards before he went to Umbar. And the capacity to delude and corrupt the Numenoreans was manifest even before the making of the Rings of Power.

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“ . . . their rich men ever richer.”

“[Sauron] said: ‘ . . . 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, . . .’.”