Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-28852094-20160720050444/@comment-26149161-20160721152820

I'm going to analyze the quote.

"To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope. Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to him, a grey-clad moving hill."

Recall, this is a hobbit's perspective. A house to them is smaller than one of ours. Then next quote mentions the exaggeration through excitement, but factor that in as well.

"Fear and wonder, maybe, enlarged him in the hobbit's eyes, but the Mûmak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not walk now in Middle-earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and majesty."

Fear and wonder is here mentioned. Someone could see a large wolf, and easily claim it to be ten feet long, because fear and excitement amplifies it. As a birdwatcher, I know all about the perils of in your excitement seeing what you want to see. Again, recall this is through a hobbit, a three-foot tall hobbit's, mind. Now, the next line could point to it either being larger than today's or larger than those that came after in Middle-earth. In either case it's not going to be huge. I think a maximum of 17 feet at the shoulder (believing the former) or 14 feet at the shoulder (believing the latter) fits fine. The tallest African Elephants of today were 13.5 feet at the shoulder.

"On he came, straight towards the watchers, and then swerved aside in the nick of time, passing only a few yards away, rocking the ground beneath their feet: his great legs like trees, enormous sail-like ears spread out, long snout upraised like a huge serpent about to strike. his small red eyes raging."

Legs like trees describes the legs of today's elephants well enough, so that doesn't imply a hundred-foot tall behemoth. Large ears point to it being an African elephant.

"His upturned hornlike tusks were bound with bands of gold and dripped with blood. His trappings of scarlet and gold flapped about him in wild tatters. The ruins of what seemed a very war-tower lay upon his heaving back, smashed in his furious passage through the woods; and high upon his neck still desperately clung a tiny figure-the body of a mighty warrior, a giant among the Swertings. "

In the line "upturned hornlike tusks", I see nothing suggesting more than two tusks, as today's elephants (and remember that the crazy ones we know of today from prehistoric times were not known or not as well known in Tolkien's time). By saying "what seemed a very war-tower", Tolkien suggests that it isn't a true war-tower. I think that fits the Elephant Towers used in real civilizations well enough, and we can make them bigger than that, as they were only outfitted to Indian and Forest elephants, not the Bush elephants or larger. "A giant among the Swertings" would be about a maximum of 5 foot 8, as they are shorter than the Numenoreans. "Tiny figure"- again factor in the excitement of the Hobbits. This also points to about the size, or a little larger, of an African Bush Elephant. This image shows Indian Elephants, and even here the peopple look small. Add four to seven feet on the Elephants and they look quite small. That is likely what we are dealing with.

http://m.mult-kor.hu/image/article/index/okor/pyrrhos.jpg

Ithilion, Discussions Moderator (Auta i lome) 15:28, July 21, 2016 (UTC)