I know I've ranted about it a million times, but every time someone brings up Roman, Byzantine, and Egyptian inspirations/influences on Gondor in more mainstream Tolkien fandom spaces (not me, because I don't even talk about it off Tumblr/DW), it seems like there's always someone who gets super weird and defensive about it. I've seen so many "well actually there's no need to consider any influences outside of England, mythology for England blah blah" responses.

And it's like! Oh, you want to play the decontextualized Tolkien quotes game? How about this one:

“But this [the setting of LOTR] is not a purely 'Nordic' area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence [in Italy]. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient [Gondorian] city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy [in Turkey]. Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction.' That is not true. The North-west part of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man’s home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not ‘sacred’, nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish ... The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a 'Nordic.'”

Or this one:

we come [in ROTK] to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith

Or:

In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium.

Or:

The Númenóreans of Gondor were proud, peculiar, and archaic, and I think are best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms. In many ways they resembled ‘Egyptians’ - the love of, and power to construct, the gigantic and massive. And in their great interest in ancestry and in tombs. […] I think the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle. The N. Kingdom had only a diadem (III 323). Cf. the difference between the N. and S. kingdoms of Egypt.

Or:

Thank you very much for your letter. … It came while I was away, in Gondor (sc. Venice), as a change from the North Kingdom

Middle-earth is not equivalent to England, or northern Europe in general, and Gondor especially is not northern at all!