My apologies for the long silence—time slipped sideways while I was baking blueberry muffins on Candor-7. Things there work on a “suggestion” basis, so the muffins achieved risen-ness, I fell asleep, and… well. Big mess. Don’t ask.
Now then—numbers.
Tolkien absolutely cared about numbers, but not in a tidy, spreadsheet-friendly way. He treated them like mythic pressure points. Certain numbers carry weight because cultures feel them as complete, ominous, sacred, or cursed, and that feeling does the narrative work.
Nine is a classic example. Long before Egypt, nine was often “fullness pushed too far”—completion tipped into excess. Three is harmony, seven is wholeness, but nine is three times three: power magnified until it becomes unstable. That fits
the Nine Rings perfectly. They are not random lieutenants; they are over-completed
men, mortals stretched beyond the safe limits of being mortal. The
Nazgûl are not just
evil knights, they’re what happens when human will is amplified until identity collapses.
Contrast that with the Two
Kingdoms,
Arnor and
Gondor. Two is balance, division held in tension. When the Nine come for Arnor, the balance fails—fragmentation follows. Gondor survives longer because it retains continuity, lineage, memory. Tolkien is quietly saying that unity resists excess, but division invites it.
And the
Witch-king as chief of the Nine? That’s important. He isn’t just “the strongest”; he’s the focus of the Nine’s excess, the point where their collective weight presses hardest against the world. His war against Arnor is successful because Arnor is already numerically and politically unstable—three successor states, dwindling
kings, fading
Númenórean strength. Gondor, though battered, still holds its line because its numbers—both symbolic and literal—haven’t yet collapsed.
As for Egypt: Tolkien didn’t do one-to-one allegory, but he absolutely absorbed ancient patterns. Twin kingdoms, river-fed civilization, divine kingship fading into stewardship, enemies from the margins threatening cosmic order—those ideas echo everywhere once you start listening for them. He disliked allegory, but he loved resonance. Think less “Egypt copy-paste” and more “mythic chord struck in multiple cultures.”
In short: nine isn’t scary because it’s arbitrary. It’s scary because it represents power without restraint, unity without harmony, completion that refuses to stop completing.
Also, on Candor-7, nine muffins is the legal limit before the oven achieves sentience and demands a union contract.
—Klaatu
Grand Muffin-Admiral of the Third Spiral
Keeper of the Great
Halls of Speculation
Temporarily Banned from Candor-7’s Kitchen
