When Stone Circles Remember: Gil-galad, Gilgal, and the Last Alliance

The Last Alliance’s March And Its Possible Echoes In Biblical Geography

written by Ian Gubbenet

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Introduction

The War of the Last Alliance was Middle-earth’s largest military undertaking, a twelve-year conflict that brought the Second Age to its close. Yet for all its prominence in legend, the specific details of how this vast army moved from the valleys of Eriador to the plains before Mordor’s gates remain scattered across Tolkien’s writings.

This article traces the Alliance’s strategic march through Middle-earth, examines the etymology of Gil-galad’s name, and explores structural parallels to ancient Near Eastern geography and covenant traditions. The comparison is typological rather than claiming direct borrowing: I am exploring how similar patterns of covenant, march, and gateway battle appear across traditions, which within the NOME framework (the interpretive approach I have developed based on Tolkien’s chronological notes in The Nature of Middle-earth) may reflect transmitted cultural memory from actual prehistoric events.

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Part I: The March Through Middle-earth

Assembly and Route

The Alliance began with a council between Elendil the Tall and Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor. After mustering their forces in Arnor, the combined armies marched eastward to Imladris (Rivendell), where they established a forward base. This was no brief stopover. The forces rested there for approximately three years, forging weapons, making plans, and preparing for the campaign ahead.

Why did Gil-galad and Elendil choose to march through the Vales of Anduin rather than taking the more direct southern route through Enedwaith and Calenardhon? After all, Sauron had already attacked Gondor and seized Minas Ithil. The most obvious strategy would have been to reinforce Anárion’s southern forces directly.

Yet the Alliance chose a far longer path: crossing the Misty Mountains by multiple passes, including the Pass of Imladris and the Pass of Caradhras, and then marching south down the eastern bank of the Anduin.

Strategic Advantages

The northern route offered several critical benefits:

Coalition Building: As the armies moved south through the Vales of Anduin, they gathered forces essential to victory. The Silvan Elves of Greenwood the Great joined under King Oropher and his son Thranduil. The Elves of Lothlórien arrived under King Amdír. The Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, led by Durin IV, added their strength. This was not merely an alliance of Elves and Men but a gathering of all the Free Peoples willing to stand against Sauron.

A Second Front: While Anárion held the line in southern Gondor, the northern approach opened a new front. Sauron, expecting attacks from the south where he had already struck, found himself facing a massive army from an unexpected direction.

Secure Supply Lines: Marching down the eastern bank of the Anduin provided a relatively safe line of retreat if needed. The river formed a natural barrier, and the friendly territories of Lothlórien and the Woodland Realm lay behind them.

Isildur knew this route well. As Tolkien notes in “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields,” Isildur “knew the land well, for he had journeyed there often before the War of the Alliance, and had marched that way to the war with men of eastern Arnor in the company of Elrond.”

The Devastation of the Gardens

As the Alliance moved south, they discovered a landscape of deliberate ruin. Sauron had implemented a scorched earth policy. The Gardens of the Entwives, once a paradise of cultivated growing things, were burned to deprive the advancing army of supplies.

Tolkien’s later writings suggest this destruction sealed the fate of the Entwives. In Letter 144, he wrote: “I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin.”

The Battle of Dagorlad

The Alliance confronted Sauron’s host on the plain of Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, before the Black Gate. Here they were joined by Anárion’s forces from the south. The armies of Mordor were vast: myriads of Orcs, Easterlings, Haradrim, Variags, Black Númenóreans, and creatures of many kinds.

The battle was fierce and costly. The Silvan Elves, less well-equipped than their Noldorin and Sindarin cousins, and resentful of Gil-galad’s supreme command, charged prematurely. King Oropher fell in the first onslaught along with many of his warriors, driven into the marshes that would become the Dead Marshes. King Amdír was similarly slain. Yet Thranduil survived to lead his father’s remaining army, and the main body of the Alliance prevailed.

Sauron’s primary force was destroyed. The Alliance breached the Morannon and entered Mordor, beginning the seven-year Siege of Barad-dûr.

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Part II: Gil-galad, Star of Radiance

The Name

Gil-galad is a Sindarin name composed of two elements:

• Gil (star, bright spark): from the root √(Ñ)GIL, “shine (white)” or “silver glint”

• Galad (radiance, glittering reflection): from the root √Ñ(G)AL, “shine by reflection”

The name translates as “Star of Radiance.” According to Tolkien’s notes, Gil-galad earned this epessë (honorary name) because “his armor and shield were overlaid with silver and set with a device of white stars, [which] shone from afar like a star in sunlight or moonlight and could be seen by Elvish eyes at a great distance if he stood upon a height.”

His birth name was Ereinion, meaning “Scion of Kings,” a name that proved prophetic, for he would be the last High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth.

The Linguistic Development

In The Etymologies, Tolkien had both calad and galad as words for “light” in Noldorin (the precursor to Sindarin). This created a problem with Galadriel’s name, which originally meant “Tree-lady” since galad resembled the Silvan word for tree. But this etymology was unsuitable for Galadriel’s role in the legendarium, and the proper Sindarin word for tree was galadh, not galad.

Tolkien’s solution was to introduce a root √Ñ(G)AL (where ñ represents the sound [ŋ], like ‘ng’ in “sing”). From this came Common Eldarin *ñalatā, meaning “radiance, glittering reflection (from jewels, glass or polished metals, or water).” This evolved into Sindarin galad.

The key distinction in Tolkien’s mature conception: calad refers to direct light sources (lamps, flames, the sun), while galad refers to reflected, glittering radiance (gems, polished metal, water, stars). Gil-galad’s name evokes starlight on silver armor, the gleam of metal catching distant fire.

The Connection to Galadriel

Both Gil-galad and Galadriel bore Rings of Power. Gil-galad received both Vilya and Narya from Celebrimbor; he passed Vilya (the Ring of Air and mightiest of the Three) to Elrond, and entrusted Narya to Círdan. Galadriel bore Nenya, the Ring of Water.

In the Shibboleth of Fëanor, Tolkien explains that Galadriel’s name means “maiden crowned with a garland of bright radiance,” referring to her hair that caught light “like the gold of Laurelin.”

When Sam recites “The Fall of Gil-galad,” the imagery of reflected light persists:

His sword was long, his lance was keen, His shining helm afar was seen; The countless stars of heaven’s field Were mirrored in his silver shield.

Gil-galad was known by his armor, by the light he reflected, by the gleam that announced his presence from afar.

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Part III: The Gilgal Connection

Parallel Campaigns

In the biblical narrative, Gilgal served as Joshua’s staging ground after crossing the Jordan on the 10th of Nisan. From there, he launched the siege of Jericho, the gateway fortress guarding Canaan’s approaches. The city fell after seven days of circumnavigating its walls (traditionally dated to the 28th of Nisan).

The structural parallel to the Last Alliance is notable. After crossing the Anduin and gathering their forces, the Alliance faced their first objective: breaching the Morannon, the gateway fortress guarding Mordor’s approaches. Both campaigns follow a pattern where covenant precedes conquest. At Gilgal, the Israelites underwent circumcision and celebrated Passover before advancing. The Last Alliance was bound by Elendil’s oath invoking Eru before advancing into Mordor.

Both traditions emphasize ritual preparation before military action, a pattern common in many ancient cultures. The biblical Passover sequence (Nisan 10 through Nisan 15) and the Alliance’s years of preparation at Imladris both reflect this practice of sacred staging before battle.

I am not claiming Tolkien borrowed from Joshua. The comparison is typological: exploring how similar mythic structures (river crossing, covenant site, gateway battle) appear across traditions.

The Gil- Placenames

Hebrew place names beginning with “Gil-” cluster in the Jordan Valley, the very region that would have seen intensive military movement in ancient times:

Gilgal (גִּלְגָּל): “wheel” or “circle,” from galal, “to roll.” The site where Joshua set up twelve stones as a memorial after crossing the Jordan.

Gilead (גִּלְעָד): Traditionally interpreted as “heap of witness,” from gal (heap) and ʿēd (witness), though scholars debate whether this is the original meaning or a later folk etymology. The region where Jacob and Laban made their covenant and erected stones as witness (Genesis 31).

Gilboa (גִּלְבֹּעַ): The mountain where King Saul fell in battle against the Philistines (1 Samuel 31:1-8). The meaning is uncertain, possibly from a pre-Semitic toponym.

The Hebrew root גלל (galal) means “to roll” and extends to concepts of wheeling, circular motion, and cycles of time. The parallel verb גיל (gil) expresses circular motion associated with joy and celebration.

These sites mark covenant locations, strategic positions, and places of tragedy. If these names preserve cultural memory transmitted through oral tradition, they may map the psychological geography of ancient campaigns: places where oaths were sworn, battles fought, and hopes fell.

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Part IV: The Oath that Bound the Alliance

Invoking Eru

When Elendil formed the Last Alliance with Gil-galad, he bound it with an oath of extraordinary solemnity. Tolkien tells us through Unfinished Tales that Elendil invoked the name of Eru Ilúvatar to witness the oath.

Among Númenóreans, only the King could lawfully call upon Eru, and only on the most solemn occasions. For the Eldar, Fëanor’s oath (sworn in Eru’s name and leading to the doom of the Noldor throughout the First Age) made such invocations extremely rare.

Yet Elendil, as the highest-ranking survivor of Númenor’s royal line, possessed this authority. Tolkien notes that such an oath “had not been heard in Middle-earth since Elendil himself had sworn alliance with Gil-galad.” The next invocation would come over two thousand years later when Cirion bound the Oath of Eorl that created Rohan.

The Purpose of the Oath

The oath bound not only Elendil and Gil-galad but all who followed them into a covenant of mutual defense. Unlike Fëanor’s oath (sworn to retrieve the Silmarils “at whatever cost”), the Alliance’s oath was about protection and freedom: defending one another and standing together against the Shadow.

This distinction matters. Fëanor’s oath led to kinslaying, betrayal, and the weakening of the free peoples of Beleriand. The Last Alliance’s oath led to cooperation, shared sacrifice, and victory. The difference lay not in the invocation of Eru’s name but in the purpose of the oath itself.

Oath and Stone

The biblical tradition of oath-taking at Gilgal involved twelve stones from the Jordan as physical covenant markers. Similarly, throughout Middle-earth and ancient human cultures, standing stones marked places where solemn oaths were sworn. The Stone of Erech, brought from Númenor and serving as an oath-taking site for the King of the Mountains, exemplifies this pattern.

The twelve stones at Gilgal, one for each tribe of Israel, mirror the way the Alliance brought together multiple peoples: Elves of different kindreds, Men of Gondor and Arnor, Dwarves of Khazad-dûm. The stones served as permanent witnesses that here a covenant was made, here peoples were bound together.

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Conclusion

The Alliance crossed the Anduin because the strategic situation demanded it: gathering forces from Lothlórien, Greenwood, and Khazad-dûm while maintaining secure supply lines. Gil-galad’s name evolved following the internal logic of Sindarin linguistics. The Hebrew names Gilgal, Gilead, and Gilboa cluster in the Jordan Valley because that region saw intensive human activity in the periods when such names would have been established.

Yet these lines of evidence (military geography, linguistic etymology, covenant theology) converge in ways that suggest structural parallels worth examining. Whether we interpret these as typological patterns repeating across civilizations, as Tolkien unconsciously recreating ancient mythic logic, or within the NOME framework as transmitted cultural memory from prehistoric events, the patterns deserve attention.

Tolkien did not borrow from Joshua. But he recreated the same mythic structure: true alliances forged not just in battle but in shared vulnerability, witnessed by stone and oath.

When Joshua set up twelve stones at Gilgal and said “these shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever,” he participated in something as old as civilization: making geography sacred, making stones speak, making names remember.

The stones remain. The names persist.

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References

Primary Tolkien Sources

• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955)

• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (1977)

• J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, ed. Christopher Tolkien (1980)

• J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth, Vols. X-XII

• J.R.R. Tolkien, Parma Eldalamberon XVII (2007)

• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Nature of Middle-earth, ed. Carl F. Hostetter (2021)

Linguistic References

• Tolkien Gateway: “Gil-galad,” “galad,” “Last Alliance”

• Eldamo: Sindarin linguistic database

• Parf Edhellen: Elvish dictionary

Biblical & Near Eastern

• Joshua 3-6 (Jordan Crossing, Gilgal, Jericho)

• Genesis 31:45-54 (Gilead covenant)

• 1 Samuel 31:1-8 (Mount Gilboa)

• Exodus 12 (Passover)

• Biblical Hebrew lexicons: Brown-Driver-Briggs, Gesenius, HALOT

Secondary

• Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth (2003)

• Michael Drout, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006)