Thursday, February 02, 2017

Orthanc's 29 steps

Michael Martinez has a discussion of the symbolism of numbers in Tolkien...
and discusses if there is a reason that Orthanc has 27 steps.

Is it because several medieval castles have 27 steps into their towers? or just a coincidence?

includes this factoid:


many medieval stairs were designed with uneven tread depths in order to make it difficult for attackers to rush up the stairs.

the main reason I linked is that this excellent blog was offline for awhile. Martinez has been writing about Tolkien for years, before the blogosphere grew.

No comments: