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It is said in The Silmarillion that Melkor was a prisoner for "three ages" before he had another trial and was released. It is estimated that this was about 2,900 years; see, e.g., this related question.

What I didn't manage to understand from the answers to this question, as well as the sources online cited, is this: was there any meaning to these ages?

The Ages that came later - the First Age, the Second Age, the Third Age - were divided according to big events that occurred. Was this the case here, or were these 'ages' just a system of measuring time?

The latter seem more likely, since Melkor was sentenced to 3 ages of prison - it'd be rather odd if his punishment depended on some arbitrary event occurring deemed special enough to start a new age. But I'm not sure.

EDIT: Again, this is not a duplicate of this related question, since I'm asking for the meaning of the ages, not their length, which I already know.

Wade
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  • Just a unit of time here. – ibid Aug 12 '21 at 20:37
  • @ibid and is it said anywhere how/why it was chosen? – Wade Aug 12 '21 at 20:48
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    I don't think so. Tolkien just loved doing unnecessary Valinor Time Math. The new book Nature of Middle-earth has pages and pages of random calculations with even more useless units. – ibid Aug 12 '21 at 21:15
  • @ibid: Can you speak to how much of this is new material not published in Letters or HoME? – Shamshiel Aug 13 '21 at 00:22
  • @Shamshiel my guess is almost all of it. There's lots of detail in NoME that I can see in the preview that's not given in HoME. And the level of detail is not something I've seen in my brief exposure to the letters, but I can't rule out some level of overlap. The point is that NoME is for all intents and purposes the next volume of HoME, authorised by Christopher Tolkien, IIRC. – David Roberts Aug 13 '21 at 01:01
  • @Shamshiel - There's a significant amount of overlap with the Tolkien content previously exclusively available in some of the linguistic journals (maybe something like 30% of the book), but there's little to no overlap with HoMe and Letters. – ibid Aug 13 '21 at 01:21
  • @Wade You are probably wrong and you probably don't know the length of a Valian year and thus the length of a Valian age of 100 Valian years. In different writings Tolkien described a Valian year as 9.582 years of the Sun, or 10 years of the Sun, or equal to a loa of 144 years of the Sun. And possible Tolkien considered other lengths of Valian years that I am unaware of. – M. A. Golding Aug 13 '21 at 15:00
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    I've reopened this question and closed the older one as a duplicate. You're asking for more information than is in the old Q&A, and the answers here have more than enough information to answer the old one. It makes no sense to have this closed as a duplicate. – Rand al'Thor Aug 13 '21 at 16:27
  • Randal'thor I agree, and thank you. @M.A.Golding: I am not sure what you are talking about. – Wade Aug 13 '21 at 16:33

3 Answers3

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In this context "age" is just a unit of time, and does not mean the same thing as "First Age", "Second Age", etc.

The length of the time in this passage of the Silmarillion was taken from the Annals of Aman.

And the Valar doomed Melkor there to abide for three ages of Valinor, ere he should come forth again to be tried by his peers, and sue once more for terms of pardon. And this was done, and peace returned to the kingdom of Arda; and this was the Noontide of the Blessed Realm. Yet many evil things yet lingered in Middle-earth that had fled away from the wrath of the Lords of the West, or lay hidden in the deeps of the earth. For the vaults of Utumno were many, and hidden with deceit, and not all were discovered by the Valar.
The Annals of Aman - 1100 The Chaining of Melkor

Earlier in the Annals of Aman an "Age of the Valar" is defined as 100 Valian Years:

Thereafter the Valar counted time by the ages of Valinor, whereof each age contained one hundred of the Years of the Valar; but each such year was longer than are nine years under the Sun.
The Annals of Aman - Of the Beginning of Time and its Reckoning

And a Valian Year is defined as 84,000 Sun hours, or 9.582 Sun years:

But as for the Years of the Trees and those that came after, one such Year was longer than nine such years as now are. For there were in each such Year twelve thousand hours. Yet the hours of the Trees were each seven times as long as is one hour of a full-day upon Middle-earth from sun-rise to sun-rise, when light and dark are equally divided. Therefore each Day of the Valar endured for four and eighty of our hours, and each Year for four and eighty thousand: which is as much as three thousand and five hundred of our days, and is somewhat more than are nine and one half of our years (nine and one half and eight hundredths and yet a little).
The Annals of Aman - Of the Beginning of Time and its Reckoning

So an "Age of the Valar" is then 958.2 Sun years, and Melkor spending three ages would thus be about 2,875 years.

It should also be noted that this chronology all reflects the way Tolkien saw things in 1951. In previous versions Melkor was said to be condemned for seven ages (which would have then been 7,000 sun years), and while I'm not sure if Tolkien later kept the "three ages" thing, he would later decide that a Valian Age was 144 Valian Years and that a Valion Year was 144 Sun Years (which would then make three ages equal to 62,000 sun years.)

ibid
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  • I see that you edited your answer. So, later in life, for how many ages he thought the Years of the Tree lasted ? – Wade Sep 05 '21 at 11:53
  • @Wade - I edited the answer because I previously didn't know if Tolkien kept the concept of a "Valian Age" or not, but I've since noticed that they are mentioned in "Time and its Perception" (NoMe p157). The latest mention I can find for the date of the destruction of the trees is VY 1728 ("Key Dates", NoMe p101), which would be exactly equal to 12*144, so 12 Valian Ages. – ibid Sep 05 '21 at 12:04
  • I see, thank you. So that would mean that, say, Galadriel is a few hundred thousand (sun) years old? – Wade Sep 05 '21 at 16:28
  • @Wade - I think she's more like 10,000 sun years, but it depends on what Tolkien settled on for the elvish rate of growth in Aman, which I'm not really sure of. In any event, Tolkien didn't measure his elves' ages in sun years. Galadriel was 72 elf years when she sailed west, which is the equivalent of a 54 year old mortal. – ibid Sep 05 '21 at 18:05
  • What do you mean by "elf years"? I meant to ask for how long she existed, not how old her body was (I assumed elves' bodies remained the same for eternity after they reached maturity?). If the Years of the Tree lasted 12 Valian Ages, which is about 250 thousand years, I assume Galadriel (who was born during those years) is at least, say, 100,000 years old? – Wade Sep 05 '21 at 18:43
  • @Wade - Galadriel was not one of the first generation of Elves. The latest statement I can find about her birth is that she was born in Aman and was "20" at the time of the exile. Tolkien's elves age differently depending on various factors, such as where they are living and which phase of their lives they're up to. In Middle-earth the first 24 years of an elf's life went at a 1:3 rate (72 sun years), but I think in Aman it was 1:144, which would mean she would have existed for only 2880 years prior to the exile. (Regardless, this is all really unrelated to the question of this post.) – ibid Sep 05 '21 at 19:43
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According to the notes in 'Annals of Aman', found within the 'Morgoth's Ring' volume of History of Middle-Earth:

(i) According to the Reckoning of the Trees

12 hours (a full flowering of both Trees) = 1 day

1,000 days = 1 year

100 years = One Age of the Valar

(ii) Relation of the Reckoning of the Trees to the reckoning by the Sun

1 hour of the Trees = 7 hours of our time.

1 day of the Trees = (7x12) 84 hours of our time.

1 year of the Trees = (7x12,000) 84,000 hours of our time.

There are (365.25x24) 8,766 hours in a Sun Year, and thus: 1 year of the Trees = (84,000/8,766) 9.582 Sun Years.

suchiuomizu
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The Answer you linked to said roughly:

1 Age = 100 Valar Years

1 Valar Year > 9 Middle Earth Years. I have no idea if another, more precise figure was given or could be calculated elswhere (like 9.75 years). But we can infer that it was not (quite) 10 years.

So it is a simple math problem. If 3 Ages are more then 300*9 Middle Earth Years:

  • 300*9 is 2700 Years
  • 300*10 is 3000 Years
  • 2900 would mean 9 and 2/3 of a Middle earth year/Valar Year
Christopher
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  • Yes, but is there a reason for this? Does this signify anything? Our years signify a roundabout around the sun. What do these ages signify? – Wade Aug 12 '21 at 20:48
  • @Wade - While our "year" is based on the Sun, our "century" is just 100 years. Think of it like that. – ibid Aug 13 '21 at 17:19
  • @ibid That's a good analogy, I guess I was just fixated on my understanding of the word "age". – Wade Aug 13 '21 at 19:15