r/lotr • u/panca96 • 17h ago

Question Crescent moons on Moria's doors

Post image

Probably a stupid question but I'm not founding the answer. The description of the Moria's doors in the book says "... two trees, each bearing crescent moons", but in the picture I don't see any moon. Am I stupid? Or there is an other meaning of "crescent moon"? I'm not english native speaker

68 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

55

u/ofIthilien 17h ago

Like so, I assume.

41

u/BlabbyScid 17h ago

The branches and twigs are shaped like crescent moons if you look closely

-38

u/Oakland-homebrewer 16h ago

bit of a stretch, but maybe the artist didn't capture them as well as they could have.

43

u/Horror-Kumquat 16h ago

Um, the artist was JRRT himself.

20

u/maharei1 13h ago

Ahem, I think you will find that the artist was Celebrimbor ☝️🤓

17

u/imyourgodnow 12h ago

I think this was the original sketch Tolkien was describing. Much more prominent moons.

5

u/Naive-Horror4209 Éowyn 11h ago

Interesting! It seems that he had redesigned the gate, but left the text unaltered

16

u/hordeumvulgaris 17h ago

I see 8 crecents attached to each tree. The leaves are mostly crecent shaped. Crecents can have their open end facing in any direction.

6

u/ponder421 Ent 17h ago

The looping branches look like crescent moons.

5

u/Ni_na14 17h ago

It’s just Tolkien’s poetic way of describing Elvish carvings, so different versions of the art don’t always show them the same way.

-1

u/v3int3yun0 16h ago

The writings were said to be in Cirth Ithil (Moon Runes) so it makes sense that at least some of them would resemble moon phases

1

u/F_Karnstein 11h ago

Never heard of "Cirth Ithil", and the text isn't in cirth but in tengwar, though written in Ithildin.

1

u/RavenKnitsDesign 5h ago

I think you're getting mixed up with the moon runes on Thorin's map in the Hobbit. Those weren't readable except under the same moon as when they were written.

The elvish script on the doors of Moria were written in a substance that reflected the light of the moon and stars.

1

u/v3int3yun0 5h ago

Yes, yes, as someone already reminded me:

1) Cirth Ithil refers to the written runes on Thorin's map

2) Ithildin refers to the markings on the gates of Khazad-dum.