Every writer seeks inspiration from something, you must imagine. If you are a fan of JRR Tolkien's work, you may have already studied the reasons that led the genius of twentieth-century fantastic stories to create such narratives. You might already know, for example, that Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" for his children - what a love of a father, huh! "But do you know where he got his inspiration from to create an entire saga based on a powerful ring?"

First of all, a warning: What we are going to tell you now is a hypothesis, not a certainty, about the inspiration of our favorite genius. Remember that, before being a writer, Tolkien was a professor at Oxford, England, and, like every good teacher, devoted much of his time to doing any research that seemed interesting to him.

The fact is that one of the subjects he studied was about a long cursed ring. Such a ring was found in 1786 in the small village of Silchester in Hampshire, England. It is estimated that the jewelry was lost in the 7th century AD.

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The ring that would have inspired the writer. Image Source: Reproduction / Nationaltrust

Weighing 12 grams and made of gold, the ring was apparently sold to a family who lived in a cottage in Hampshire. The phrase on the ring is: “SENICIANE VIVAS IN DE [O]”, which means “Senicianus lives well in God”. So far, nothing extraordinary, is it?

In a place 130 kilometers away, known by archaeologists as "The Hill of the Dwarves", was found in an ancient Roman temple, a material that contained the inscription of a curse. This kind of recording made in the name of God with the intention of harming an enemy was once very common.

The message in question was addressed to a god named Nodens and asked that a man named Senicianus, who had stolen a ring, be cursed and become very ill until the ring was returned to its owner, Silvianus.

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Image Source: Reproduction / Theregister

In 1929, Tolkien was a professor at Oxford, two years before he began writing the story you know today as "The Hobbit." When archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler helped with the Dwarfs Hill excavations, he discovered the inscriptions of the curse and asked Tolkien for help in discovering the origin of the word "Nodens" and thus uncovering what the god was.

Tolkien is therefore known to have full knowledge of the relationship between the Senicianus curse and the gold ring decorated with the inscriptions. Was it inspiring the moment the writer wrote about the ring of his books? After all, Dwarf Hill seems to have inspired Tolkien to create the dwarves in his story. It will be?

Fans of The Lord of the Rings visit the house in Silchester village to this day, trying to discover what inspired one of the greatest idols of fantastic literature of the last century. And you, what do you think about this story?

* Originally posted on 10/03/2014