Mûmakil - Lord of the Rings

Mûmakil were large creatures resembling elephants, often used in battle by the Haradrim. To most cultures, the Mûmakil were creatures of great size, as fearsome as dragons, and to them were ascribed all kinds of strange powers.

Mûmakil resemble elephants, except that they are larger and have six tusks instead of two. Two are on the bottom jaw, two larger tusks are where an elephant's would be, and there were two smaller tusks above those.

No complete Mûmak skeleton has ever been found, but accounts found in both the Red Book of Westmarch and in other scrolls suggest that they stood between fifty and one hundred feet tall (although official top trumps suggest a height of around 35 feet), with four huge tusks and two smaller ones to each side of the mouth. When charging into battle, they bellowed and screeched at great volume, and a thunderous din that shook the very earth preceded the advent of their coming and crushing all in their path. Some Mûmakil also seemed to have lighter grey skin than others.

Virtually nothing is known about how the Haradrim managed to attach the great bamboo and canvas war harness to its back: presumably, they were able to coerce it into kneeling or lying down so that a team could haul the huge framework into place, tying it under the belly of the beast. Hanging from the harness were ropes that the Haradrim used to climb up into the frame and take up their positions on the platforms. Their elevated position allowed them to target an otherwise hidden enemy and gave their arrows and spears a greater range. Gondorian folklore of the time maintains that a shaman, who steered the Mûmak using long reins, was the means by which the beast was tamed in the first place.  Long banners were hung by the frame, their red, grey, and black colors depicting the Eye of Sauron. Before this, they probably had war paint depicting the symbol of the tribe they belonged to.

Mûmakil live in the jungles of Far Harad and some of them were taken in and domesticated by the Haradrim. The Haradrim had been enemies of the kings of Numenor since the second age, when later tyrannical kings began demanding tribute from the fledgling Haradrim tribes. Mûmakil were likely used during the Haradrim wars with Gondor before the War of the Ring, and when their grudge against the men of the West was rekindled by the opportunity to crush Gondor by way of an alliance with Sauron, the armies of Mordor began to include Mûmakil forces.

Among the tribes of Haradrim, a Mûmak would have been, literally, a huge status symbol, and there would have been great competition among the tribes to possess one; it is likely that this competition led to frequent tribal wars. The Mûmakil would have moved with the tribes as they travelled across the desert, which would have been quite often, since something as big as a Mûmak would soon have exhausted the available forage. A dead mûmak was almost as valuable as a living one, as it would have provided the tribe with a mountain of resources: tusks, bone, hide, dyes, sinew and meat that could be salted, providing the tribe with food for months. 

It is said that a Mûmak could be killed with a single shot to the eye (which was not depicted in the live-action film). Otherwise, it was able to withstand a substantial onslaught against its thick hide before eventually falling. The moving war towers were practically invincible, but shots to the head from spears, javelins, and arrows could kill it. The archers of the Morthond vale killed several in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and in the books, all the Mumakil were killed. However, some appeared to survive and retreat in the movie.