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Multiple identies for the 4-toed statue have been theorized. However, the identity was confirmed to be Taweret. This page exists purely as a historical record of theories prior to the confirmation.
Anubis
Anubis comparison
The statue is Anubis, the god of the Underworld.
Evidence
- Anubis has already been shown in connection with the island (The Temple wall)
- The statue appears Egyptian
- The statue is holding Ankhs, much like Anubis is often depicted.
- Anubis judged the dead, which would be a thematic element shared with the like the smoke monster.
- The monster has been referred to as Cerberus, who guards the underworld of 'Hades'
- Canids, like jackals, have only 4 toes on their rear legs.
- In an official podcast the producers hinted that the statue had the body of a dog. (Official Lost Podcast/May 26, 2006)
- Anubis is considered the Egyptian counterpart to the Greco-Roman Cerberus. Both relate to the underworld or afterlife.[1]
Counter-evidence
- The ears are not long enough to represent a Jackal’s ears.
- Anubis is most often represented holding one ankh, not two.
- An important deity would likely have been placed at the center of the island.
- The face looks nothing like that of a Jackal.
Implications
Anubis later became known under the Egyptian Middle Kingdom as the god of mummification, and the one who guides people to the afterlife. This occurred when the more dominant Ennead and Ogdoad belief systems merged and as a result of the identification of Atum with Ra, and the newer religions compatibility, that then Anubis became a lesser god in the underworld, giving way to the more popular Osiris during the Middle Kingdom. Further, Reincarnation, resurrection, etc all have been hinted at in the series.
Sobek
Evidence
Sobek has a crocodile's head. Does the statue?
Sobek is an Egyptian god with a crocodile's head.
- The head of the statue, as seen in "The Incident, Part 1", seems to be a crocodile's head.
- The head of the character on the parchment Ilana found in Jacob's cabin in "The Incident, Part 1".
- The body of the statue appears male and human, as Sobek is depicted.
- The statue wears a shendyt (a short loincloth) and a nemes (an Egyptian headcloth), as Sobek does.
- Sobek carried an ankh. The statue carries two ankhs.
- Sobek was sometimes represented with ears like those seen on the statue.
- Sobek, as a creator god, was linked with the sun god Ra. Sobek was also seen as an avatar of Amun and thus connected to Ra as Sobek-Ra. There are numerous allusions to Ra, Ra-Horus, etc. in the hieroglyphs around the island, including Jacob's tapestry.
- Sobek represents fertility and a sense of protection, repairing past evils.
- look at the hiroglyphes: an anchor, a foot and calf, a bowl-ish thing and a crocodile. ( since we do not see what the statue holds in the right hand, that could be an anchor instead of a second Ankh...)
- the alternate hiroglyph depicts a crokodile sitting on top of what seems to be an entrace to a stone building, very remenescent of where jacob lives.
Counter-evidence
- four toes
- really? Sobek is a crocodile and a crocodile has 4 toes, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crocodilelyd5.png so i am not sure if that is really Counter-evidence
- the statue has little ears like a hippo; crocs don't have obvious ears at all.
Taweret
The statue is Tawaret, the Egyptian goddess of maternity and childbirth.
Evidence
- Tawaret is the only Egyptian god/goddess that is ever shown holding two Ankhs. The statue is holding two ankhs.
- Tawaret has four toes
- Tawaret is known as the mistress of the horizon. This may explain why the statue would be built looking out toward the ocean instead of in the center of a temple or shrine as many other Egyptian gods are.
- Statue relation to maternity and childbirth can be associated to the pregnancy experiments Juliet was hired to run.
- The statue has little ears like a hippo.
Counter-Evidence
- Tawaret is a fertility goddess with a hippopotamus aspect. Representations of her are almost universally rotund, as if she were with child. The statue is slender and masculine.
- Tawaret is typically represented with a hippopotamus head, the arms and legs of a lion, and the back of a crocodile. Later, she was represented with a crocodile on her back, as Sobek was considered her consort. The statue both has the body of a human and is clothed in the Egyptian fashion, containing no references to the lion or the crocodile.
Counter-Counter-Evidence
- From the episode summary on the official Lost portion of the ABC website. "And as the camera pulls back, we see what we've been waiting to see since we first glimpsed that four-toed foot over three years ago... the towering, majestic statue of the Egyptian goddess Taweret."
http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=recap#t=162212&d=201648
- The fact that the statue is not pregnant may be on purpose, meaning that those who built it are praying to Tawaret, the goddess of fertility, who is causing problems when they become pregnant.
- The fact that the statue is not pregnant (or not there at that point) may have an influence on the Others' inability to give birth successfully.
Various Other Egyptian Deities
| Ra | Maahes | Wepwawet |
|---|---|---|
| God of the Sun | God of War | God of War |
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| Evidence – Ra sometimes was depicted holding an ankh and wearing these clothes. | Evidence – Ears on the statue match Maahes’s lion head. | Evidence - Wepwawet was a wolf-headed God, very similar to Anubis in appearance, but with shorter ears. |
| Counter-evidence – Ra was too significant a god to be shown in this fashion, and did not have upturned ears. | Counter-evidence | Counter-evidence |
| Nefertem | Horus | Thoth |
|---|---|---|
| God of Sunrise | God of the Sky | God of the Moon |
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| Evidence – Ears on the statue match Nefertum’s lion head. The statue was first shown in "LaFleur", and was associated with a "fleur-de-lis" (lily flower). | Evidence - Horus sometimes was depicted holding an ankh and wearing these clothes. There is a character on the show name Horace. Horace was sometimes shown with up-pointed ears [2] | Evidence – Thoth was a male deity who thematically would fit well into the show. He dealt with arbitration, magic, writing, science and the judging of the dead. He served as a mediating power between good and evil, making sure that neither ever had a victory over the other. |
| Counter-evidence | Counter-evidence - The statue's head does not match that of Horus, in any way. | Counter-evidence – Thoth had a very distinctive head that does not match the statue. |
An Egyptian pharaoh
The statue is a pharaoh of that ruled over the original Egyptian inhabitants of the island. Pharaohs were often deified after their deaths. So a statue of a pharaoh could potentially share traits of a deity like animal ears.
Specific pharaohs
- A similar statue of Ramses II exists that was found broken in pieces. Ramses II is thought to have been the Pharaoh of Exodus, and one episode was called ‘Exodus’. In the Dharma Special Access video on December 29, 2008 - when asked a question about the 4-toed statue - Carlton Cuse gestures the number 2 (4m 27s).
Evidence
- Egyptian pharaohs were sometimes represented in giant statues.
Counter-evidence
- Egyptian pharaohs don’t have upturned ears, and were usually only depicted with one ankh.
Hermanubis
The statue represents the Greek version of the Egyptian god Anubis.
Evidence
- Despite its otherwise Egyptian clothing, the statue’s sandals are Greco-Roman in style.
- Hermanubis was often represented with much shorter ears than Anubis.
Counter-evidence
- Hermanubis was typically represented in Greek apparel.
Narasimha
The statue is Narasimha the lion-headed incarnation of Vishnu, an Indian God, sometimes depicted with a lion’s head. Narasimha is the male reflection of Simhavaktra, the Indian version of Sekhmet (an Egyptian godess).
Counter-evidence
- There is no other evidence of South-Asian influence in the statue
Serapis
The statue is Serapis, a Hellenistic deity.
Evidence
- The statue shows characteristics that are both Greek and Egyptian.
Counter evidence
- Serapis had a human head.
Richard Alpert
The statue is Richard Alpert.
Variations in the Richard Alpert theory
- Richard is the son of Sekhmet, an Egyptian goddess with a lioness’ head. As such, he was represented with a lion’s ears.
- Richard is Ra, and the statue represents Ra. Richard Alpert's initials are R.A.
- Richard is from the future, traveled to the past, and was deified by the original inhabitants of the island, who built a statue of him.
Evidence
- Richard shares some Egyptian characteristics, and has been observed wearing eyeliner in the Egyptian style.
- Ra is usually depicted wearing a crown and carrying an ankh, like the statue.
- Ra is the Sun god. Sun has become dependent on Richard's association with John to reunite her with Jin.
- The god Horus is subsumed into Ra in late Egyptian times. As parallel, Richard's purge will end Horace and the DHARMA initiative.
- Richard may be immortal, and therefore represent a deity.
- At Comicon 2008 Damon and Carlton were asked by a member of the audience 'How many toes does Richard have?' to which they replied that we would soon be seeing Richard with bare feet 'In the near future'.
Counter-evidence
- The statue’s ears do not match Richard’s ears.
- Richard does not wear eyeliner. (Those are the actors natural eyelashes)
John Locke
John Locke travels to the past as becomes the leader of the original culture on the island, who built a statue of him.
Evidence
- John Locke has mysterious properties, and has time traveled.
Counter-evidence
- The statue’s ears do not match Locke’s ears.
- We have now seen the statue. It does not look like Locke. It is not any of the characters on the show. It is still possible that the statue represents a character on the show, such as Jacob, but the statue itself is clearly an Egyptian god or goddess.
An ancient leader
The statue represents and ancient leader who has not yet appeared in the show.
Jacob
The statue represents Jacob, the original deity of the natives, who is also to be identified both with an otherwise unknown Egyptian Pharaoh of the Hyksos Period and with the gods who supposedly ruled Egypt for thousands of years at a time prior to the human Pharaohs of the 4th millenium BC.
A dog-human hybrid
The statue is a statue of a dog-human hybrid.
Evidence
- In the episode "The Beginning of the End", Hurley sees a painting in Jacob’s window; it shows what seems to be a dog with some type of humanoid upper body, sitting with its hands folded in front of it.
- Dogs have 4 toes on each rear foot.
- In an official podcast the producers hinted that the statue had the body of a dog. (Official Lost Podcast/May 26, 2006)
Counter-evidence
- None of the above account for the Egyptian influence observed in the statue.
Nefilim
The statue may be a reference to the giants of legend, the Biblical children of the fallen angels (Nefilim), who were reported to have 6 fingers and 6 toes on each hand and foot, and who ruled the world in pre-Adamic times. Their assignation by the great flood might also tie in to other legends, such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu, as these were also lost island civilizations
Evidence
- The statue was originally planned to have 6 toes.
Counter-evidence
- None of the above account for the Egyptian influence observed in the statue.
- None of the above account for the ears observed on the statue.
- None of the above account for why the production team would accept a change to 4 toes.
Implications
This would introduce another non-human vector to the mythology of the island.
Tezcatlipoca
The statue might attempt to represent the Aztec deity Wikipedia:Tezcatlipoca. The name in the Nahuatl language is often translated as "Smoking Mirror" and alludes to his connection to obsidian, the material from which mirrors were made in Mesoamerica and which was used for shamanic rituals. This deity would then represent the smoke monster.
Helios
The statue represents the Greek god Helios, known as Colossus of Rhodes was destroyed due to an earthquake in 224 BCE. All that remained standing was its legs from the knees down. According to scholars, it was of a similar size to the statue of Liberty.
Evidence
- Charlie uses the phrase "colossal joke."
- It evokes a statue of history.
Walt
The statue has the head of a bird, and represents Walt.
Evidence
- Walt has a special communion with birds.
Counter-evidence
- A bird head does not account for what appear to be ears.
- There has been no evidence that Walt has any Egyptian connections.
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