Statue of Taweret
From Lostpedia
- "The Statue" redirects here. For other statues, see: statue.
The Hydra • The Arrow • The Swan
The Flame • The Pearl • The Orchid
The Staff • The Tempest
The Looking Glass • The Lamp Post
[[:Category:{{{Images}}}|Images]]
A giant statue of Egyptian goddess Taweret existed on the Island since at least the 1800s. Jacob lived under the statue for an unknown amount of time, even after its partial demolition sometime before 1974. By 2004, only the left calf and foot remained. The statue has only four toes on each foot.
Contents |
Description
Statue exterior
The statue depicts Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of birth, rebirth and the northern sky. The statue, made out of a gray stone, holds an ankh in each hand. The statue's feet each have four toes, a trait noticed by Sayid when he first saw the statue's remains while sailing around the Island. ("Live Together, Die Alone") The statue, built near the sea, is visible from a large distance due to its size, which has been estimated to be 240–250 ft. (75 m) tall (about the height of a 30-story office building). (Official Lost Podcast/May 26, 2006) After the statue's partial demolition (the cause of which is unknown), only a part of the left leg remained. It is unknown where the rest of the statue went.
Plinth interior
The statue stood on a hollow plinth, in which Jacob dwelled for an unknown amount of time. The plinth could be entered by pushing part of the exterior wall in, opening up to a hallway which in turn led to a large chamber. The chamber contained columns (presumably to support the statue). A fire pit burned at the center of the chamber. During Jacob's time spent living there, he wove a tapestry on one of the walls. A ceiling vent permits a view of the remaining leg of the statue from inside. ("The Incident, Parts 1 & 2")
History
Ancient Times
The statue was fully built at the time when the Black Rock arrived on the Island. Its hollow base was inhabited by Jacob. It was also the location of a seaside meeting between Jacob and his enemy on the day the ship appeared on the horizon. ("The Incident, Parts 1 & 2")
Sawyer's group experienced a flash to approximately this period of time as well, and saw the back of the statue briefly before Locke turned the frozen wheel, moving the Island and causing another time flash, after which they moved to 1974, a time when the statue had already been demolished. ("LaFleur")
2000s
After the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 in 2004, the statue was seen by Sun, Sayid, and Jin while sailing around the Island in a plot to attack the Others. Sayid spotted the statue first, and was disconcerted to find that the statue had four toes, as well as that the rest of the statue was missing. ("Live Together, Die Alone")
Three years later, after the crash of Ajira Airways Flight 316, an entity claiming to be John Locke approached Richard and demanded to be taken to Jacob, whom he secretly intended to kill. ("Follow the Leader")
Richard, unaware that this person was not actually Locke, agreed, leading him to the statue's ruins and showing him the entrance to the base, allowing Locke and Ben to enter. Once inside, the entity claiming to be Locke was revealed to be Jacob's ancient enemy, who convinced Ben to stab Jacob and then kicked the dying Jacob into the fire pit, setting him alight and presumably killing him.
Meanwhile, Bram and Ilana, passengers of Flight 316 who worked for Jacob, attempted to find Jacob at his cabin, but instead found a woven illustration of the statue pinned to the wall by a knife. Realizing that Jacob was likely at the statue instead of in the cabin, they burned the cabin and traveled to the statue, revealing to Richard that the person inside the statue with Ben and Jacob was not John Locke by showing Richard the body of the real Locke which they, along with several other survivors of Flight 316, had carried around in a large metal case. ("The Incident, Parts 1 & 2")
Wired puzzle
Wired magazine's May 2009 issue, guest-edited by J.J. Abrams, included a Lost-related puzzle on pages 104-105 consisting of two pages of one- and two-digit numbers. When the first page was decrypted using a Vigenère cipher, it read:
| “ |
U S E L E T | ” |
or, "use letters backward from end".
Counting letters backwards from the end of a section of an article on time travel written by Thorne Plates for the August 2003 issue of Wired, in which the Casimir effect was referenced, yielded the solution to the second page:
| “ |
T H E F O U | ” |
or, "The four-toed statue is Taweret".
Solvers
After a suggestion from Nick Tierce that the numbers represented an alphanumeric code, Steven Bevacqua, a postproduction supervisor for the television series Life, who was the first to solve the issue's master puzzle,[1] decrypted the first half of the Lost sub-puzzle, whereupon Boulder, Colorado musician Jon Leyba solved the second half of the puzzle.[2]
Trivia
- The statue was confirmed by ABC to depict Taweret, and has since been confirmed again by the solution to a puzzle in the May 2009 issue of Wired magazine, which was edited by Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams.
- Jin, Jacob and Jacob's nemesis are the only people known to have seen both the ruin and the fully-intact statue.
- In a teleconference with select fans held on April 17, 2008, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse slightly rectified a misquote of an anecdote previously told by Lindelof at the 2008 Paley Festival. According to Cuse, the true story was that the statue was originally stated to have six toes in the script, but ABC executives mandated that it better have only four toes, which was considered less "weird" than six toes. According to their own words, Lindelof and Cuse didn't mind as long as the statue didn't have five toes. However, sculptor Jim Van Houten gave yet another explanation in the May 9, 2008 video podcast, claiming that the statue's foot was changed from six to four toes because it was hard to tell that it wasn't a regular five-toed foot when it had six toes. Note that in the real world, hippos have four toes, which in hindsight would match with a hippopotamus-headed Taweret.
Unanswered questions
| Unanswered questions |
|---|
|
- For fan theories about these unanswered questions, see: Statue of Taweret/Theories
- Why is there a statue on the Island?
- Who built the statue?
- When was it built?
- Why does Jacob live under the statue?
- What happened to the rest of the statue?
See also
References
- ↑ Itzkoff, Dave. "A Magazine With a Puzzle Buried Inside". The New York Times. April 20, 2009. [1]
- ↑ Leyba, Jon. "Spoiler Alert! LOST puzzle solution from Wired's May issue" Mestizo Rocks: Mestizo's Beer & Tunes Blog. May 19, 2009. [2]
External links
| |||||||||||||
