It's hard to ignore the similarity between the wild Eastern Oxen and the aurochs, a real wild animal from which modern cattle are derived. Like the Oxen of the East, the aurochs was widely hunted, but survived into the seventeenth century (the last known aurochs died in 1627). A bull aurochs was as tall as a man at the shoulder, which perhaps gives us some idea of the likely size of the great Oxen of Rhûn. If Tolkien intended the wild Kine of Araw to be ancestors or relations to the aurochs, he made no mention of the fact, though the similarity seems too close to be simple coincidence.
|
SHARE
