Shelob

'she' + 'lob' (see Additional Information below.)

A Great Spider.

Shelob was an evil spirit of spider-form. Huge and monstrously hungry, Shelob "only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life" to feed upon until she was so swollen that "the mountains could no longer hold her up..." She was the offspring of mating between Ungoliant and lesser spiders. Exactly when Shelob was born is not made clear, but she was the " last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world." The earliest events specifically mentioning Shelob were at the end of the First Age.

Shelob's physical traits included "two great clusters of many-windowed eyes" that were "monsterous and abominable." The sounds she made included a "gurgling, bubbling noise and a long venomous hiss," and she had "the stench of death" about her. She was a poisonous spider, capable of giving a "sting to death" or a "little bite of poison to still the struggling of her meat...". And, she was "...huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he [ Sam] had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hair that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw."

Now began the Valian Years of the Trees. ( V.Y.t ) and a new reckoning of time.

V.Y.t.1495. To escape the wrath of the Valar after ruining the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, Melkor and Ungoliant fled to the north and left Valinor for Lammoth in Middle Earth.

V. Y. t. 1496 Shelob was likely born after this time. Ungoliant was driven out of Lammoth, in this year, by Melkor and his Balrogs. Ungoliant escaped to Nan-Dungortheb, and mated there with other foul creatures of spider-form. Since this is the only specific mention of Ungoliant mating it may be safe to assume, though not certain, that Shelob was born and lived in this general area until the end of the First Age.

1 Age.

F. A. 597. End of The War of Wrath. At the end of the First Age, Shelob was among the few creatures to escape the rapidly encroaching sea that resulted from the sinking of Beleriand at the culmination of the War of Wrath. By this time Shelob was probably no longer in her youth, since she was one of the few creatures cunning enough to survive the cataclysmic end of the First Age. Thus, the available facts would seem to put the year of her birth somewhere between V.Y.t.1496 and before the end of the First Age.

2 Age.

S. A. 1 - 999. The few survivors of the ruin of Beleriand fled eastward in Middle Earth after crossing the Blue Mountains. They were perhaps drawn to the east by the evil abiding there, for after the War of Wrath, Sauron also departed from the west of Middle Earth for most of the first millenium.

At some point during this first millenium of the Second Age, Shelob made her only known home in a cave of many tunnels called Torech Ungol (Sindarin for 'Lair? of the Spider') that was located near Cirith Ungol (Sindarin for 'Pass of the Spider'). "There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form, even such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea. ... How Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr..."

S. A. 1000. Sauron starts to build the Tower of Barad-dûr. As Sauron's power grew Elves and Men avoided the area so few prey passed near Shelob's lair any longer and she grew more and more hungry.

Shelob was always dangerous, especially when she was very hungry: "she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness." Sauron " knew where she lurked. It pleased him that she should dwell there hungry but unabated in malace, a more sure watch upon that ancient path into his land than any other that his skill could have devised. ... And sometimes as a man may cast a dainty to his cat (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) Sauron would send her prisoners that he had no better use for. ... And so they both lived, delighting in their own devices, and feared no assault, nor wrath, nor any end of their wickedness." It seems, from this account, that Shelob and Sauron were not collaborators, but understood and accepted the benefit of the other.

3 Age.

T. A. 2980. Shelob encountered the creature Gollum while he explored the tunnels of Cirith Ungol seeking allies to help him recover the One Ring. There, she captured Gollum but he cleverly secured his release by promising to bring her more victims to eat. This is another example of Shelob's intelligence and cunning ability to adapt and accept the benefit of others.

T. A. 3019 Gollum fulfilled his promise to Shelob by leading Frodo and Sam to her on their quest to destroy the One Ring in Mount Doom.

Shelob was severely wounded by Sam using Sting during their encounter in Shelob's Lair . In spite of a wound that gave " such anguish had Shelob ever known, or dreamed of knowing, in all her long world of wickedness." she was ready to spring back into action to crush and poison Sam. Yet, only the light from the Phial of Galadriel could dissuade her from taking Sam as her prey. "No such terror out of heaven had ever burned in Shelob's face before. The beams of it entered into her wounded head and scored it with unbearable pain, and the dreadful infection of light spread from eye to eye. She fell back beating the air with her foreleg, her sight blasted by inner lightnings, her mind in agony. Then turning her maimed head away, she rolled aside and began to crawl, claw by claw, towards the opening in the dark cliff behind." Shelob is not heard of again, but it is not told whether the wounds inflicted by Sam were fatal.

Additional Information.

Shelob had many progeny that infested Middle Earth. "Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Duath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood."

In Letters, 81 (#70), Tolkien asked his son if 'Shelob' would be a good name for a monstrous spider, apologizing that it was "...of course only 'she + lob' ( = 'spider' )... " but that it sounded particularly offensive. The root word 'lob' is used by Bilbo who taunts the lesser Mirkwood spiders with his song about "Lazy Lob..." to draw them away from the Dwarves who were imprisoned in their webs. A note about this song in "Flies and Spiders" (Annotated Hobbit) explains that 'lob' comes from the Old English words 'loppe' and 'lobbe' for spider.

Related Links.: Encyc.: Shelob.