Quote:
Originally Posted by Zigûr
As an aside, it strikes me as potentially (but not necessarily) inconsistent that Sauron's spirit was capable of carrying off the One during the drowning of Númenor, but could not do so from Mordor at the end of the Second Age. Why wasn't Isildur grabbing at it out of the air as it slipped off Sauron's severed finger and floated away into the East? Presumably Sauron could no longer achieve feats like this, having expended so much power in creating another body for himself after the last one was drowned.
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That is actually easily resolved. Sauron didn't take the One with him to Númenor in the first place. Both
The Akallabêth and
Of the Rings of Power tell us that Sauron took up the One again after he had returned to Barad-dûr. If he had brought the Ring with him in spirit form he would have had no need to take it up again unless we infer against the text that he put it down for some time, doing other spirit things in spirit form before beginning his work to restore his body.
There are two important reasons why Sauron might have deliberately chosen to keep the One hidden in Barad-dur, protected by the Nazgûl and his armies (who might not have known that the Ring was back there):
1. He wanted to appear humble and defeated in the eyes of Ar-Pharazôn. The One, as a Ring of Power, enhanced his power both in appearance (Sauron would appear more powerful etc. than he might actually be, just as Galadriel did when Nenya's light concentrated on her) and in actuality (however that worked exactly). But Sauron did not want to appear terrible and powerful, he wanted to win the trust of the King and Númenor and corrupt and ruin him.
2. He might have feared that the Númenóreans would actually take the Ring from him and use it against him. His armies were terrified by the might and splendor of Ar-Pharazôn, after all, and he was at the peak of his power and wearing the Ring at that time. One can but wonder what Pharazôn could have done or become had he taken the Ring from Sauron. And he could have done that, there is no doubt about that. Keep in mind that Sauron never feared that anybody would destroy the Ring, but it is never stated that he never feared to lose the Ring to a superior enemy and thus be usurped and replaced by a new Dark Lord who takes everything from him. He certainly might have feared that Ar-Pharazôn would attempt to do that.
Sauron leaving the instrument and symbol of his power and rule over Middle-earth - his crown if you will - back at Barad-dûr would also symbolize that he only temporarily abandoned his seat. He would come back eventually as he did. And the Nazgûl most certainly were completely under his thumb by then. They could not have taken the One for themselves in any case, and they would have guarded it against any mortal lieutenant of Sauron's who might have entertained such notions (had any such known that Sauron had left the Ring behind).
We also have to keep in mind that Númenóreans must have known about the existence of the Rings of Power. Three Nazgûl were Númenóreans after all, and if some of them were of the line of Elros (which is not unlikely in my opinion) then they would have known even more about them.
There is a letter (or a draft of a letter) in which Tolkien talks about Sauron's spirit bringing the One back from the abyss that took Númenor but you can see while reading that letter that he begins to wonder how that would have worked. My guess is the lines in
The Akallabêth and
Of the Rings of Power talking about him taking the One up again might have been inspired by such ideas.
Of course, if you want to insist that Sauron must have taken the Ring to Númenor then one could speculate that Sauron's body being destroyed by some natural disaster isn't *metaphysically* or *legally* the same as him being overthrown by living enemies (and there is some truth to that). Gil-galad/Elendil and subsequently Isildur had a certain right to the Ring because it was taken from him in combat, and that could indeed explain why Sauron's spirit was unable to snatch the Ring from his own body or out of Isildur's hand.
But then, being crushed by Ilúvatar himself (or by the Valar being granted greater power by Ilúvatar) should have had an even more devastating effect on Sauron so ... this is tricky.
Anyway, I'm firmly in the camp of those who believe that the Ring never was in Númenor in the first place.