I'm listening to the Lost Podcast w/ Jay & Jack (show 4.16). I've attached an interesting side-by-side comparison that a caller mentioned on the podcast. On the left is Ramses II. On the right is the statue from Lost.

Hmmm... And ol' Ramses's legs are broken off right about where the 4 toed statue was broken....

When did we see the full statue?

There is so much to remember! :(

After John fell down the well. In the first episode that we saw that happen, they showed Sawyer holding the rope, coming out of solid ground, then they cut away. Then they showed the scene again in the next episode (or was there an episode in between?), this time, instead of cutting away, we see them look up and see the statue. Then they flash immediately (I think that's the last flash).

So I'm reading a biography of Timothy Leary. There are a lot of names in it, I'm pretty bad at retaining names when I'm reading biographies. So when I reached the period in Leary's life when he became a faculty member of Harvard's psychology department, I assumed the familiar name of a fellow faculty member and ally to Leary through his controversial psychedelics experiments was someone from earlier in Leary's life that I had forgotten about.

It took me about 50 pages for it to click.

Richard Alpert.

Interestingly, the real Alpert went on to become a spiritual leader, known as Baba Ram Dass, and taught, among several other things, Buddhism. With the show's many other references to Buddhism, I don't suppose that's mere coincidence, though I assume it's more simply a clever nod and doesn't imply that the character has any actual relation to the real Alpert.

Ram Dass was also apparently the inspiration for the roller skating guru disguise in Fletch.

I wonder how many toes Richard has.

Holy crap, I think Pirate Bill figured it out. :eek:

Now STOP THAT, I want the series to be a surprise. :p

The decorative carving doesn't match up. Also, I don't believe that Ramses II was depicted with hair in the statue you've pictured. (nor does Rameses have pointed, doglike ears)



I think a better choice for the statue (which appears to have pointed ears) is Anubus, one of the Egyptian gods of the afterlife whose specific role was to watch over the dead and guide lost souls on their trip to the afterlife. Anubus is half human/half jackel (which would also explain the 4 toes) and carries a flail, which the statue appears to be holding in his right hand.

And how about this (which I just thought of while typing):

What if the island is the Egyptian afterlife and the Others are, in fact dead, ancient Egyptians (which would explain why they don't age; they are whatever age they were when they died-- it would also explain Richard's eyeliner)? The Egyptians considered those who reached the afterlife to be immortal. Looking up Aaru (the afterlife) on Wiki, it is often depicted as a series of islands (which I didn't remember, but hey...). Interestingly, the gates a soul has to pass through to get to the afterlife are guarded by demons (smoke monster, anyone?) There are several other Egyptian gods the statue could depict such as Bast or Mut that have pointed ears and are male (female gods generally had rounded shoulders; that said, I'm just guessing it's male) but they don't fit as well into what we know so far.

It may also explain why Ben killed Locke...so that he could be eternal leader of the Others.

Finally, I think it may explain why the Islanders can't have babies/die. In Egyptian mythology, whether or not you go to the afterlife and become eternal depends on the weight of your sins. If you have little to no sin, you go to Aaru. But what if you go to Aaru and then sin (say, by killing or purging a bunch of people)? Maybe the punishment is no babies in eternal world. As an aside, I don't remember anyone saying that the original Dharma people couldn't have babies (and as Sawyer said to Juliet, "maybe whatever made the Others unable to have babies hasn't happened yet"), we just see the 21st century Others as not able to have babies. Also a good explanation for why Claire and Sun were able to have their babies...because they weren't Others.

Now I want to go look up the hieroglyphs we've seen around the island to see if any of the symbols depict specific gods.

Hmmm...

(The Hanso Foundation was behind the original Dharma Initiative)

And before you ask, sadly I don't have anything better to do tonight...

This is likely where the idea that the statue is Ramses II came from: