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Places in Middle-earth

Chamber of Mazarbul

Type: Buildings, Halls, Houses

Region: Rhovanion/Misty Mtns

Other Names Chamber of Records

Location: Near the easternmost edge of the mines, and above the eastern gate. This room contained Balin's tomb.

Description: ...the glimmer grew stronger, and they saw that it came through a doorway on their right. It was high and flat-topped, and the stone door was still upon its hinges, standing half open. Beyond it was a large square chamber. It was dimly lit, but to their eyes, after so long a time in the dark, it seemed dazzlingly bright, and they blinked as they entered.
Their feet disturbed a deep dust upon the floor, and stumbled among things lying in the doorway whose shapes they could not at first make out. The chamber was lit by a wide shaft high in the further eastern wall; it slanted upwards and, far above, a small square patch of blue sky could be seen. The light of the shaft fell directly on a table in the middle of the room: a single oblong block, about two feet high, upon which was laid a great slab of white stone.
'It looks like a tomb,' muttered Frodo, and bent forwards with a curious
sense of foreboding, to look more closely at it. Gandalf came quickly to his side. On the slab runes were deeply graven:
'These are Daeron's Runes, such as were used of old in Moria,' said Gandalf. 'Here is written in the tongues of Men and Dwarves:

BALIN SON OF FUNDIN
LORD OF MORIA.'

There was another smaller door on the other side of the chamber, under the shaft. By both the doors they could now see that many bones were lying, and among them were broken swords and axe-heads, and cloven shields and helms. Some of the swords were crooked: orc-scimitars with blackened blades.
There were many recesses cut in the rock of the walls, and in them were large iron-bound chests of wood. All had been broken and plundered...
'This must be, as Gimli says, the Chamber of Mazarbul; and the hall must be the twenty-first of the North-end. Therefore we should leave by the eastern arch of the hall, and bear right and south, and go downwards. The Twenty-first Hall should be on the Seventh
Level, that is six above the level of the Gates...'
FotR, Book II, Ch 5, The Bridge of Khazad-dûm

Contributors: Lyllyn 6.15.03

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