The Building of Barad-dûr

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

(...) Now, these statements raise two questions. First, if (as ToY says) the One Ring was made around 1600, right at the end of the 600 year long building of Barad-dur, then how can Barad-dur's foundations have been made with the power of the Ring? The foundations, after all, surely must have been the first part of Barad-dur that was built (it's rather difficult to build a fortress from the top down!).

Perhaps 'made' as in fortified (by magic) -- although if so the word fortified itself seems better -- even if 'made stronger' includes made

Anyway I can imagine Sauron later fortifying the foundations of the Dark Tower so that they are, in a sense, re-made -- later not only strong enough to hold up the weight of the structure itself, but to resist destruction as long as the One endures.

The second problem is that the reign of Tar-Minastir was, according to 'The Line of Elros', from 1731 to 1869. So, even if we assume that the Akallabeth is meant to place only the completion of Barad-dur, and not its whole construction, in the reign of Tar-Minastir, that still puts it more than a century later than is said in ToY.

I'm not sure The Line of Elros was written with enough attention to Appendix B (already published material of course) in general. If I remember correctly we can find dates here that directly contradict Appendix B, as well as make a certain 'mix' of texts seem problematic.

Of course I could characterize Akallabeth as never published by its author as well, and nothing says that we can't try to iron out essentially (in my opinion) 'draft' material with author-published ideas in any case, but I still think it's only fair to JRRT as a Worldbuilder to at least remember that certain contradictions, or seeming contradictions, might hail from texts that weren't really ready for Tolkien's readership, or at least not necessarily in the form revealed to the public by Christopher Tolkien.

Not that anyone 'forgot' or said otherwise!

I think Christopher Tolkien was concerned with consistency between Akallabeth and The Lord of the Rings at least, and I'm not sure but I think that the reign of Tar-Minastir (what little we know of it) can fall in line with AK, given the life-spans of the Numenoreans.