[Man-of-the-Wold]

Well, this is quite something.

Clearly, when Tolkien wrote those letters, which I have not studied, his idea was that Sauron had the Ring, and evidently used its power on the Numenoreans, to which Sauron certainly did indeed submit voluntarily, "to gain what he would by subtlety when force might not avail."

However, this seems at odds with the Akallabeth and "Of the Rings of Power and Third Age," where the Ring is in no way even hinted at in all Sauron's dealings in Numenor.

So, one can accept the letters at face value as the formulation that Tolkien settled on and had in mind when composing those books as they were posthumously published. There are definitely ways to allow that he could have "spirited" it back to Middle-Earth somehow even with the lost of his bodily form in the Downfall.

But I personally would like to know more about the timing of those letters and whatever information is available (perhaps in HoME) with respect to the development of Tolkien's writing in this respect.

I would offer two reasons why JRRT's ultimate formulation involved a Ring-less serpent in the Garden of the Edain:

1. First, the quote that I started with, which I have also found repeated more firmly in the Akallabeth: "There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur," (which admittedly might mean nothing more than that he put it back to work, but somehow that doesn't make sense given the tone, etc.)

2. With the Ring at fault the Numenoreans seem less culpable in their own fall. Who could expect them to resist corruption in the face of Sauron wielding the One Ring. No, I think that Tolkien wanted Sauron's imprisonment in Numenor to be only a mistake of pride and the precipitator of the Numenoreans' fall.

Surely, Sauron's impact on Numenor was very severe, leading to Melkor/devil worship, human sacrifice, conquest and all the rest. But as a moral lesson, it was really intended to be a demonstration of Man's own penchant for pride, arrogance, fear and thus evil, which Sauron simply fostered and vastly accelerated with lies and deceptions, on top of a thousand-year-old trend.

This was the fall from grace that Men only redeemed when the Dunedain (such as the rangers Aragorn and Faramir) and their allies returned to a state simple nobility not unlike the Edain of the First Age. To blame it on the Ring in Numenor simply potrays the Numenoreans as victims.

As for some of the minor points:

a. Yes, of course Sauron could conceal the Ring from casual sightings, but he didn't know what would happen when he was at the mercy of the Numenoreans and the powers that they might and did in fact have. Think of Amon Hen. Also, Isildur and Elendil were able to take Ring, at admittedly a great cost. My daughter and I still see taking the Ring to Numenor as the greater risk.

b. Unless the paranthetical note in the Letter 211 quote is also from the letter itself, and not a personal remark, I don't see why the Numenoreans would not have had at least as much of an idea about the One Ring as Isildur did, which was still quite naive. Sauraon had given the Nine to Men including three Numenoreans captain early in the Second Age, and Tar-Eldarion and Tar-Ministar had worked close with Gil-Galad in running Sauron out of Eriador. Surely, they'd have learned the Lore of the Rings during those events.

So, that it for now.