Saturday, March 14, 2009

Whooooooo Are You? Who?-Who? Who?-Who?

No, CSI isn't coming on, I'm finally ready to make good on a promise I made when I recapped the LaFleur episode, so that can only mean one thing:



With the 1 week lag between episodes this week, I get to go back to the last episode and talk about the four toed statue for a bit. We finally got to see it in all of it’s glory. From the back anyway. Some people say that the reason we see it from the back is because the face is going to be of someone we know i.e. Locke, Sawyer, Juliette, even Vincent’s name has been spread around. All of them have a mediocre (at best) theory to support the claim. Then we move on to the Egyptian Goddess theories. First of all, can we agree it’s a female statue? It appears to be wearing a skirt/dress/robe type of deal and I know that during the time period it would be taken from that some of the males would have dressed in ceremonial robes and could look like this from behind but I’m going with that the statue is of a female. So if this is true we can cut out the Anubis theory right from the start. It ain't him, or it, whichever Nubbi prefers.


So let’s look at a few Egyptian Goddesses that it could be:



Heqet is a possibility and the face of a frog would be a good reason to only show her from the back. She is also the goddess of life and fertility. She is considered to be a child of Ra, funny how there is someone who doesn’t seem to age on the island with the initials R.A. I don’t think I subscribe to the theory that Richard Alpert is Ra in human form tho. But who knows? More on Heqet - She is associated with the later stages of childbirth. Don’t the women have trouble carrying to full term? It is said that it was Heqet who breathed life into the Egyptian God Horus (Goodspeed?) and thus connected her with resurrection. Good thing there’s not a lot of resurrecting going on on this island or it could mean something here. Oh wait. Moving on, Heqet was later associated with the Goddess Isis and even so much as became an aspect of her. So let’s look at Isis for a minute.


Isis is another Goddess of fertility. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife. Ah, good a woman that knows her place. D'oh! The matron of nature and magic. Hmmm, a magical island surrounded by, well, nature. Considered the friend of slaves but only if they are not shackled on a ship. Isis and Heqet are both good theories but take a close look at the island statue and notice that there is what appears to be ankhs in both hands. Isis and Heqet only have one ankh. Let’s move on.



There were a few others that were interesting including Meskhenet (pictured above) who is also a goddess of childbirth and she is associated with Ka (the life force) and fate. Hear that word a lot on this show, do we? Only problem with this being a statue of Meskhenet is that she is shown with a cow uterus on her head. Now the island did have cows but I don’t see a uterus on this statues head.
I wouldn’t mention the next goddess if it wasn’t for one thing that sticks out at me, and I will tell you what that is in a second. Nekhbet is a Goddess of the underworld and the protector of the Necropolis or the City of the Dead. She is also called The Mother of the Mothers. She is considered to be the creatrix of the world. Although she is called a mother, later in her evolution she was said to be unable to have children and was forced to adopt in order to become a mother. Now I haven’t even gotten to the important part yet. She is often depicted in hieroglyphics as a white vulture, sort of like this:



Where have we seen this symbol before? But the houses' money is being laid on:





Now on to the best bet in the theory race, Taweret. She is often depicted as having the face of a hippopotamus (a good reason for TPTB to hide her face from us), she is also often shown as holding two ankhs. Many depictions also show her as being pregnant. So make your connections there and also add other facts as well. The other things connecting her to the statue and the island is she is described as “The Great Female”. The ancient Egyptian goddess of maternity and childbirth, protector of women and children. She was both a fierce demonic fighter as well as a popular deity who guarded the mother and her newborn child. She was thought to assist women in labor and scare off demons that might harm the mother or child. Because hippos are denizens of the fertile Nile mud, Egyptians also saw them as symbols of rebirth and rejuvenation.



In the Book of the Dead Taweret, the 'Lady of Magical Protection', was seen as a goddess who guided the dead into the afterlife. As with her double nature of protector and guardian, she was also a guard to the mountains of the west where the deceased entered the land of the dead. Many of the deities relating to birth also appear in the underworld to help with the rebirth of the souls into their life after death. One last connection to LOST; Taweret is considered to be the Goddess of the Northern Sky in that her constellation covers almost the entire northern horizon. What was on Eko’s stick? Something about looking to the North?
Now here's my theory on what happens to the statue itself and how it connects many theories together. If all the theories are connect and all of them have the statue being an idol for fertility and motherhood, let's say that at some point the statue is destroyed. Obviously it is but let's say it is destroyed by either the U.S Army, Dharma Initiative or some other people arriving to the island. I do not think the "Hostiles" would have been the folks responsible for destroying the idol or statue. They know the power it holds and they used it. At some point visitors to the island learn the power of the statue and destroy it. The power I am guessing the statue has is that it allows the Hostiles or "The Others" to have children. If you think about it we have only seen women who belong to Ben's people die while pregnant. We haven't seen any of the DI die during pregnancy. Claire was fine and now I believe Sun would have been as well. All the women Juliette dealt with were part of Richard Alpert's family tree. Destroy the statue, destroy the guardian, destroy the Hostiles by eroding them away little by little by not allowing them to make any more. It's called a war of attrition. Genius and it only applies to them because believing is half the battle. And believe they do, too bad one of them, at least, doesn't seem to age.

7 comments:

Cerpts said...

Gosh, I really hate to poop on your partridge pie after you've written all that but I think that statue is obviously male.

In all the Egyptian art I've seen (and in the very pictures you use of Heqet, Isis etc.), all the women in ancient Egypt wear long gowns which go down to their ankles. The statue isn't wearing that; it's wearing a short tunic that just barely covered it's buns & tackle. This short "mini-skirt" deal in all the ancient Egyptian art and hieroglyphs I've ever seen was exclusively worn by males; women in ancient Egypt didn't go around in mini-skirts -- that was reserved for Twiggy much later. Also, add to this the obvious muscle definition of the statue's arms and I think there can be no doubt what we're looking at is a male statue. Sorry.

Cerpts said...

Oh, I forgot to mention those two little pointy things sticking up slightly from each corner of the statue's head. They could very well be the tips of ears. Anubis had great big ears (even bigger than Prince Charles) so it's probably not him. Set has smaller ears so he's a definitely possibility (considering it's even an Egyptian god which is only speculation -- it could merely be Sawyer with the long, flowing hair and a pack of smoke tucked in his tunic). Also, the god Thoth sometimes was portrayed with a crown that was a half moon with the two points sticking up so it could also be some sort of representation of that. But I think the statue is obviously male.

Cerpts said...

Oh hell, wait a minute. The statue's obviously Batman. I'd know Adam West's thighs anywhere!

Cerpts said...

But you know...

If the statue IS Sawyer, it would be just like him to wear a skirt that barely covers his buns and tackle!!!

Cerpts said...

Maybe it's Sawyer in a Batman costume?!?

Cerpts said...

Wouldn't you just LIKE that!

Fink Master Flash said...

I am gonna drudge this post back up because it appears that ABC is saying that the statue is in fact Taweret. Even though it looks more like Sobek, they are telling us it is Taweret. So we shall see. So good job on your bet!