Meneltarma

The Pillar of Heaven

The Meneltarma rose from the middle of the Mittalmar, at the very centre of Númenor, a steep, high mountain visible from every region of the island. Its lower slopes were gentle and grassy, its upper part steep and bare, and its summit, though from below it seemed a sharp peak, was in fact a wide shallow hollow of turf large enough to hold a great gathering. From its base five ridges ran out toward the five promontories of the land, and its southern foot opened into the Noirinan, the Valley of the Tombs, where the rivers Siril and Nunduinë both rose. A road climbed the mountain in a spiral from the south, ending on the northern edge of the summit hollow.

The Hallow of Eru

The summit was the one holy place of the Númenóreans. No building ever stood there, no altar was raised and no offering made; it was a place of silence, and none but the king ever spoke aloud upon it. Three times a year the king went up in procession from Armenelos: at the beginning of spring to ask for a good year, at midsummer to praise Eru, and at the end of autumn to give thanks for the harvest. The people followed him in silence, wearing white and carrying boughs of the evergreen oiolairë. Three eagles lived on the mountain and appeared whenever anyone approached the summit, hanging in the air above the three ridges to the west; the Númenóreans called them the Witnesses of Manwë and believed that the Elder King had sent them to watch over the holy place. The Meneltarma was also the place of far sight. In the days when the Eldar still sailed to Númenor, a person of keen eyes standing on the summit could make out, far away in the West, the white glimmer of the haven of Avallónë on Tol Eressëa, and it was there that Tar-Palantir came in his last years to look in vain for the coast of the West.

In the years of the shadow

As the Númenóreans turned from the Valar, the ascent of the mountain was neglected. Kings from Tar-Ancalimon onward went up rarely or not at all, and Ar-Gimilzôr abandoned the rites altogether. Tar-Palantir restored them and himself climbed the mountain at every season, but under Ar-Pharazôn the summit was left silent. Even in the days of Sauron's temple in Armenelos, when men were burned to Melkor and the Faithful were hunted, no one dared to defile the Hallow; Sauron himself did not set foot there, and the people believed that the mountain remained the one place in Númenor the Shadow had not touched.

The Downfall

When Ar-Pharazôn's fleet landed on the shores of Aman and Eru changed the world, Númenor sank into the Sea. In the last hour Tar-Míriel, the true queen, tried to climb the Meneltarma to the Hallow, but the waters took her before she reached the summit. The mountain went down with the land, yet the exiles held that its peak alone had been spared, and that it rose again as a lonely island in the ocean. Mariners of Gondor sought it in later ages, hoping to see from it the lost West, but the Sea had been bent and no ship ever found it.

The Meneltarma stood in the exact centre of the star of Númenor, in the inland region of the Mittalmar, with Armenelos to its east, the Emerië to its south-west and the Noirinan opening from its southern base. Its five ridges pointed toward the five promontories; the westernmost was the one over which the Witnesses of Manwë kept their watch.