The Rings of Power are magical artefacts in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, most prominently in his high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring first appeared as a plot device, a magic ring in Tolkien's children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit. Tolkien later gave it a backstory and much greater power: he added nineteen other Great Rings which also conferred powers such as invisibility, and which the One Ring could control. These were the Three Rings of the Elves, the Seven Rings for the Dwarves, and the Nine for Men. He stated that there were in addition many lesser rings with minor powers. A key story element in The Lord of the Rings is the addictive power of the One Ring, made secretly by the Dark Lord Sauron; the Nine Rings enslave their bearers as the Nazgûl (Ringwraiths), Sauron's most deadly servants.
Proposed sources of inspiration for the Rings of Power range from Germanic legend with the ring Andvaranaut and eventually Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, to fairy tales such as Snow White, which features both a magic ring and seven dwarfs. One experience that may have been pivotal was Tolkien's professional work on a Latin inscription at the temple of Nodens; he was a god-hero linked to the Irish hero Nuada Airgetlám, whose epithet is "Silver-Hand", or in Elvish "Celebrimbor", the name of the Elven-smith who made the Rings of Power. The inscription contained a curse upon a ring, and the site was called Dwarf's Hill.
