Quote:
Originally Posted by Zigûr
According to the Tale of Years the Nazgûl appeared in 2251, but the Shadow fell on Númenor around 1800 and they began colonising Middle-earth in that time. My suspicion would be that Sauron gave three of the Nine to Númenóreans who were in charge of, or at least Men of significance in, Númenórean dominions in Middle-earth, which would lead me to imagine that they were not in Númenor when their gradual transformation into wraiths occurred.
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I wrote
an essay on this many years ago. “The Shadow falls on Númenor” is probably a reference to Sauron’s ensnaring three lords of the Númenóreans, whose influence began (or accelerated) the corruption of Númenórean society.
We know Sauron took the One Ring with him because Tolkien tells us he did. (
Letters 211,
already cited in this thread.) The body he first made for himself could shift form (“Beren and Lúthien” in
Silmarillion: he shifted to a gigantic wolf in an attempt to kill Huan, then shifted to a great vampire bat when Lúthien released him after he yielded Tol Sirion to her; later he shifted his appearance in his disguise as “Annatar”) was destroyed when Númenor fell into the abyss, and his spirit –
with the Ring – fled to Mordor. There he constructed a new body for himself (expending energy doing this: Letter 199,
already cited in this thread.) but the new body he made was unable to shift form. (If you have not considered it before, it is described in terms very like Durin’s Bane, like a Balrog: man-shaped, larger than a man but not gigantic, of
profound darkness.) When Tolkien wrote that Sauron “took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr”, a reasonable literal interpretation is that he put it on his new hand. (That interpretation is in accord with
Galin’s in this thread.)
It certainly seems the Rings of Power connected the visible world to the invisible
in order to slow the effects of Time. Slowing the effect of Time is a primary Elvish motive in making the Rings of Power: Elven regret of loss due to time is the weakness Sauron used to tempt them into using his techniques (his “science” or “engineering”, if you will) to resolve what he convinced them perceive as a problem. We aren’t told this explicitly, but it sounds as if the methods Sauron used to slow the effects of time were
necromantic in nature. The Great Rings made Men (and Hobbits) invisible as a result, but not Dwarves. We can assume they did not make Elves invisible, and I think that’s correct, but we only know it for certain about the Three, because we know for certain Galadriel was wearing Nenya but remained visible. Bombadil caused the One Ring to vanish, which rather suggests he moved it completely into the invisible (“wraith”) world for a moment. (Bombadil was also able to see Frodo when Frodo put on the Ring.)
Taken together, this offers a “mechanism” consistent with the mythos for the Keepers of the Three to hide their Rings from sight, or at least from the sight of Mortals: They could move their Rings into the invisible (“wraith”) world. The Eldar in the Third Age, some of whom (e.g., Glorfindel) could see the invisible world, would hardly tell Sauron’s spies and allies where the Three were disposed even if they could see them.
If you want absolute confirmation one way or another,
Gothmog, LoB, you will have to wait to see if Tolkien opined on this in his voluminous notes kept in the J.R.R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University and Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. He certainly he mused upon it, and it since he seems to have been in the habit of writing down his musings, there’s a good chance it’s buried somewhere in his notes. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for anyone to find
and publish it.