Posted: June 14, 1999 at 09:45:07: by Martin Read
: : Are there any mentionings outside of LOTR and the hobbit of
: : them? And does anybody know what happened to the Great Mumak? I
: : know that in the Two Towers Tolkien said that perhaps it
: : traveled all the way to the Anduin and then swept out to see,
: : or possibly captured or killed by some Men of Gondor. And were
: : the Haradrim really blacked-skinned? Or were they more akin to
: : Africans?: I can't think of any references right now. This is my last post here for the evening. "Haradrim" just means "peoples of the south", and does not refer to any one race or tribe. The only black-skinned men we encounter in THE LORD OF THE RINGS are (what appear to be) a fantasy race devised by Tolkien which merit only two mentions in "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields". These are the "black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues", later called "Troll-men". Melanistic relatives of the Druedain, corrupted by Sauron?
I hadn't noticed before but the white-eye reference would tend to rule out any straight equation with Sub-Saharan Africans who often have a yellow-tinge to the sclera of the eyes - interesting observation. This description of the Far Haradrim reminds me of the ugly Ancient Egyptian god Bes. He is usually represented as a squat dwarfish (not Dwarvish) thick-limbed, pot-bellied character with a grimacing face and protruding tongue, wearing a leopardskin kilt and ostrich feathered head-dress. He was associated with war and, curiously, childbirth. As Tolkien was well aquainted with ancient mythologies a connection would not be impossible. : The other Haradrim appear to be much lighter-skinned (although we only get a close-up view of one, Sam's southron, who was brown-skinned, perhaps like someone from India or the Middle East). : I don't know anything more about the Mumak. I guess it's up to the reader to decide for him/herself what happened to it.
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