Унголиант: Қараңғы Өрмекші және Валинор Ағаштарының Қырылуы

Fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle earth

Ungoliant is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, described as an evil spirit in the form of a giant spider. Her name means "dark spider" in Sindarin. She is mentioned briefly in The Lord of the Rings, and plays a supporting role in The Silmarillion, enabling the Dark Lord Melkor to destroy the Two Trees of Valinor, darkening the world. Her origins are unclear, as Tolkien's writings do not explicitly reveal her nature, other than that she is from "before the world"; this may mean she is a Maia, an immortal spirit. Scholars have likened the story of Ungoliant and Melkor to John Milton's Paradise Lost, where Sin conceives a child, Death, by Satan: Sin and Death are always hungry. There are limited parallels in Norse myth: while there are female giants, they are not usually spiders, though the Devil appears as a spider in an early Icelandic tale, and a female giant in the Prose Edda is named Nótt ("Night"), she and her brood dwelling in and personifying darkness.

Ungoliant means 'dark spider' in Tolkien's invented language of Sindarin. It is a loan word from She is also known as Gloomweaver (Sindarin: Gwerlum , Quenya: Wirilomë ).

[[File:Arda in the Years of the Trees. svg|thumb|upright=1.6|In the Years of the Trees, Arda was lit by the Two Trees of Valinor. Melkor damaged the trees, and Ungoliant drained them of their sap who aided Melkor in his attack upon the Two Trees of Valinor, draining them of their sap after Melkor had injured them. She also consumed the reserves of light from the wells of Varda. Afterward the light of the trees persisted only within the Silmarils of Fëanor. Ungoliant helped Melkor evade the Valar by shrouding them both in the impenetrable darkness she produced. Melkor had promised Ungoliant to yield anything she wished in return for her aid, but betrayed this promise by withholding the Silmarils, and summoned the Balrogs to repel her. Ungoliant fled to the Ered Gorgoroth in Beleriand. At some point she gave birth to the Giant Spiders, including the character Shelob of The Lord of the Rings. In The Silmarillion, it is stated that when she went into hiding her hunger was such that she would mate with other spiders only to devour them later, with her offspring used as food once fully grown. The Silmarillion hints that Ungoliant's unremitting hunger drove her to devour herself. Joe Abbott, writing in Mythlore, comments that Ungoliant and Shelob are similar monsters, "product of a singular concept". He observes that they are female giants, something found in Northern folklore. Those are not usually in spider form, but he notes an early Icelandic example where "the Devil appears as a spider and has his leg cut off". On Ungoliant's race, he notes Tolkien's remark in The Theft of Melko (in The Book of Lost Tales) that "Mayhap she was bred of mists and darkness on the confines of the Shadowy seas, in the utter dark that came between the overthrow of the Lamps and the kindling of the Trees, but more like she has always been [Abbott's italics]; and she it is who loveth still to dwell in that black place taking the guise of an unlovely spider." Ungoliant is mentioned in the 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first film of Peter Jackson's film trilogy of The Hobbit, when the wizard Radagast the Brown conjectures on the origin of malevolent giant spiders endemic to Mirkwood.