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Notinole from Babylon to Middle-earth - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

The assumption of a duodecimal numbering system may be supported by Tolkien's use of the yen, "(long) year", to represent a 144-solar year period, as well as the fact that the first elves numbered 144, and by the fact that Bilbo went to considerable effort to invite one gross of relatives to his special meeting at the Party. There is also a Qenya word, tuxa, for 144. However, we use a twelve-month calendar system and have a word, gross, for 144 and we don't use a duodecimal system. Furthermore, we don't have numerals for 10 and 11. When computer scientists and mathematicians wish to perform operations in duodecimal, they have to substitute letters (usually T and E) for those numbers. It looks rather strange but once you have practiced a little, you get used to thinking of T0 as 120 and 100 as 144. One of the problems with yen, though, is that it didn't always represent 144 years. In early drafts of the appendix on calendars Tolkien used it to represent a century, 100 solar years. Why did he change it to refer to 144? The Peoples of Middle-earth doesn't say, but presumably it had something to do with the Eldar's preference for "sixes and twelves". We actually reckon time in strange numbers ourselves, or used to: fortnight (14 days), score (20) of years, etc. We still use the vague generation to refer to a period of approximately 25 years. So the reckoning of time and dating is not much help in determining how a number system works. But since we count time, how we count it (as opposed to marking it in an annal or calendar system) does reveal something about the number system we're using. For example, in Aragorn's letter Tolkien provided two years: 6341 and 61. Many commentators have noted that these numbers are provided in reverse order from the modern system, so they really mean 1436 and 16. That is the year in which Aragorn wrote to Sam and his family: Fourth Age 16, Shire Reckoning 1436. Helge argues that "the Eldarin pronunciation was evidently the equivalent of 'six thirty four hundred and thousand'". Now, he is not (should not) be saying that is how an Eldarin Elf would say the number in English. Properly translated, the number should be pronounced "fourteen thirty-six" or "one thousand four hundred thirty six". But it's not so clear that the Elf would have pronounced each digit in its "tens" position that way.

J.R.R. Tolkien's depiction of 6431 in Tengwar.

J.R.R. Tolkien's depiction of 61 in Tengwar

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