Mûmakil

Oliphaunt

The Hobbits of the Shire knew of oliphaunts only from an old nonsense-rhyme, which Sam recited to Gollum in Ithilien: a creature grey as a mouse, big as a house, with a snake for a nose, that shook the earth as it walked and was older than any tale. Sam did not believe in them, and neither did Gollum, but on the morning of March 7, T.A. 3019, Sam saw one. Faramir's rangers ambushed a column of Haradrim marching north to Mordor, and out of the fight came a mûmak, as the Southrons called it, a beast larger than any elephant Sam could have imagined, with legs like trees and tusks bound with gold, a war-tower on its back and a scarlet-and-gold harness, trampling friend and foe alike in its terror and crashing away into the woods. Sam thought it the most wonderful thing he had ever seen, and his only regret was that nobody at home would believe him.

The Pelennor Fields

The Haradrim brought many mûmakil to the siege of Minas Tirith. They came up in the host of the Southrons under the Black Serpent, and when the Rohirrim rode onto the Pelennor at dawn on March 15 the beasts were among the few things that stopped them. Horses would not go near them; the Riders had to swerve around each one, and the mûmakil stood in the tide of battle like islands, with the Haradrim rallying about them and archers shooting from the towers. Only when the Southron army broke and fled did the great beasts, maddened by wounds and fire, run wild and crush their own masters. Their carcasses lay on the field with the rest of the dead, and the smell of their burning is remembered in the account of the clearing of the Pelennor.

Nature

The mûmak is an elephant of the elder world, far larger than any that survive; the narrator remarks that its like is not seen in later days. It is grey, thick-hided, tusked, trunked and long-lived. The Haradrim trained them for war, built towers on their backs for archers, and used them as the terror-weapon of their armies. Sam's rhyme, being a Shire rhyme, is not evidence of the beast's nature, but the narrator lets Sam's wonder stand as the reader's.

Fate

With the defeat of the Haradrim and their later peace with King Elessar, the mûmakil presumably went home to Harad. Nothing more is said of them.

Elephants of mountainous size, grey, with a trunk, tusks bound with gold or brass, legs like tree-trunks, and a hide so thick that arrows did little more than sting. They carried a tower for archers and a driver, and their tread shook the ground.

None; the war-beasts of the Haradrim, harnessed in scarlet and gold and driven with goads.

Not told; the great beasts of the South, a survival of the elder world.

Not mentioned after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.