"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..."

—The Fellowship of the Ring

Balin's Tomb was located deep within Moria on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains to the north of the great chamber of the Dwarrowdelf. This room was also the Chamber of Mazarbul, or The Chamber of Records, in which Balin took up his seat against the Goblin onslaught. The tomb in the center of the room, on which the beam of light fell, housed Gimli's uncle Balin. Upon the tomb these words were inscribed: Balin, Son of Fundin, Lord of Moria. Both doors of the chamber, the large and the small, were littered with the remains of a skirmish. Gandalf, quickly scanning the chaos of the room, spotted the remains of a book. Inside, written in the runes of both Moria and Dale, with Elvish script intermingled, and told of the plight of Balin's folk upon their arrival to the Dimrill Dale thirty years prior. Their end seems to have been an awful one, as the last scribblings read as such: "We cannot get out. The end comes...drums, drums in the deep...they are coming."

External link Edit

• Balin's Tomb at Tolkien Gateway