Tolkien's essay treats the etymology of the
Old English word for the ancient
Aethiopians, . Tolkien concluded that, while the meaning of the first element was evidently "Sun", the meaning of the second element was not definitely recoverable, but might be guessed at: The phrase appears in
Exodus, a free translation of the
Book of Exodus (
Codex Junius 11): The main thrust of Tolkien's argument in this two-part paper seems to have been that was a corruption of , and had come to mean something different in its later form than it had in its original. He begins by pointing out that Ethiopians in the earliest writings are presented in a very positive light, but by the time they written of as "Sigelwarans", the perception has become the opposite. He does not speculate why, but instead demonstrates a clear relationship between and and shows how discovering the original meaning of the word is almost impossible, that trying to do so must be "for the joy of the hunt rather than the hope of a final kill". The word is a conflation of two words, the inherited word for
Sun, the feminine , and an Old English neuter or for "jewel, necklace", loaned from Latin . Suggesting a connection of with Gothic π·π°πΏππΉ "coal", Old Norse "fire", and Old English "to roast" and "
hearth", Tolkien tentatively concludes that in the we may be looking at "rather the sons of
Muspell than of
Ham", an ancient class of demons "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks and faces black as soot", English equivalent of the Norse
fire giants ruled by
Surtr, that had been forgotten even before the composition of
this version of Exodus. == Influence on Tolkien's fiction ==