LOST: Egyptian Hieroglyphics

On LOST last night, the episode entitled “One of Them” came to a climax where the timer hit zero and a partial display of Egyptian hieroglyphics was displayed.

It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the show as I write this, and someone has posted they’ve discovered what the symbols might mean. Check out this picture of the LOST timer glyphs posted by “onehundredeight” over on http://lost.cubit.net.

I saw this post, and took a look at a number of hieroglyphics sites on the web to see if I could get independent confirmation about what those symbols mean.

First of all, heiroglyphics can be read in several different ways. The biggest question is whether to read these symbols from right to left, or left to right. This is actually pretty easy to determine, even if you don’t have experience with hieroglyphics (and I certainly don’t). The direction the symbols are facing is the direction they should start from. So, for these symbols, you have to read them from left to right.

One of the tricky things about hieroglyphics is that even one symbol change can change the meaning of the phrase. Since we didn’t see the entire set of five glyphs, we have to keep that in mind.

Another thing to notice is that the first three symbols were on a black background, and the fourth and fifth symbols are on a red background. This may mean that there are two glyph phrases. Without the second symbol (which was never revealed), it’s difficult to know if the hidden glyph would make two distinct phrases that make sense.

The first symbol means “to cause”. The last symbol means “enemy” or “death”. Seems like a slam dunk, right? There are a couple of symbols that aren’t used, and like I said, those symbols are important.

I wasn’t able to determinate what the third symbol meant, but the fourth symbol was “the vulture”. One of the heiroglyphics sites (and I’m sorry, I don’t remember which one) described the Egyptian vulture as a bird that will repeated try and open eggs by flying over them with a rock and dropping the rock. Needless to say, this doesn’t work very well, but they continue until they succeed.

So, if we take those two symbols alone, could they mean “drop death”? “Drop death”, as in a bomb? Think about it for a minute. They’re in a hatch near a sealed chamber that’s highly magnetic. There are blast doors in the hatch. Sayid said that there may be nuclear material behind that thick wall of concrete.

Could “drop death” mean “drop a nuclear weapon”? Sure, it’s a variation on “cause death”….but, that’s my theory.

I think the real question that people are overlooking here is not what the heiroglyphics mean, but….. What the heck are Egyptian Heiroglyphics doing on that counter in the first place?

Update 02/23/06 – Read More about the Lost Heiroglyphics

Update 08/22/06 – According to the LOST writer’s themselves, the meaning is “Underworld”. The writers revealed this at this year’s San Diego Comic Con.

LOST: Has Walt met Alex?

Michael’s been gone for two episodes now, and is trying to find Walt. I’ve been hoping that Walt will be back soon, because we might get a better idea of what The Others have been thinking when they tried to grab Walt.

We saw the bearded man (the guy Sawyer called “Zeke”, and that the producers call “Mr. Friendly”), ask Alex to bring Kate to him. Could Walt have met Alex? Might Alex try and leave with Walt to go back to the LOST camp? That sure would make Danielle a larger part of the show.

LOST: Hanso and the DeGroots

Here’s another LOST theory I’ve been thinking about.

Hanso and the DeGroots start working together, Hanso for some other
reason than he’s not telling the DeGroots. He finances the
construction of the hatches on the island so they can be used as
observation posts for the “perfect society” ideas the DeGroots have.
The observers keep in the hatch, saying they’re just going to observe
what’s going on.

The experiment starts, only to have everything go completely berserk
once the people on the island itself figure out they’re victims of
whatever Hanso had planned. Maybe he found out about the black
smoke, and wants to weaponize it, or something like that. The
people in the hatch take injections so that they can’t be taken over
by whatever Danielle was referring to. I remember her saying
something about not wanting whatever happened to the rest of her group
getting loose in the “real world” if they were ever rescued.
(Possibly, “infected” by the black smoke?)

The Others have figured out they have some kind of defense using
people that the black smoke won’t mess around with, and that’s why
they’re grabbing people.

LOST: The Countdown to Zero

Well, it looks like next week (Feb. 15th) will be a very interesting episode. In the previews, it appears that the counter reaches zero.

If you’ve seen the preview, it’s a bit of a shock…. Well, it was to me because I wasn’t expecting anything like that until closer to the end of the season.

In any event, if you look carefully, you’ll see that the counter in the preview is NOT the same counter has has been shown in the room with the computers, and the button. Is there more than one counter in the hatch? Is this another red herring, along the lines of seeing Jin speak English to Hurley?

Let’s assume for a moment that counter really does hit zero…. What will happen?

I’m going to make a couple of guesses here. First, if it’s just Locke and Jack down there, I think the counter will hit zero….and nothing will happen. Jack will turn to Locke, say something “Well, John, nothing happened. This was a waste of time….” …and then all hell breaks loose.

Personally, I’d rather see something like this happen: The counter hits zero, and someone else in the hatch sees Locke and Jack near the computers just as the blast doors go down, cutting them off from the rest of the LOST group. The show would end there, and then the following week would focus entirely on Jack and Locke trying to get out. By the end of the show, they’d find their way out… only to find that the LOST camp is empty. Then they’d have to find out where the rest of the group went.

Should be interesting to see what they’ve planned.

Whatever happens, it’s likely that camp life won’t be as relaxed as before. We might see Desmond again, or we might end up getting a closer look at The Others.

We’ll see soon enough.

LOST: Widmore Construction

Last couple of podcasts, the producers talked about the building in
the background after Charlie walks out of the soundstage where the
commercial was being filmed. The producers said to watch for an
Easter Egg (the name on the building). This week they said it was
hard to see, but it had a “Widmore Construction” on it. They didn’t
say what it meant, but they said to write it down and watch for it.

Michael’s in the construction business….. Maybe he worked for
Widmore Construction?

By the way, Widmore.com and WidmoreConstruction.com have already been registered as domains, in case you were thinking of doing so yourself. They’re not affliated with ABC, they’re probably going to be fan sites, along the lines of Mr. Cluck’s.

LOST during the Super Bowl

I’m watching the Super Bowl right now… It’s halftime and The Stones are on right now.

Right before they came on, ABC ran a LOST commercial using the song “Addicted to Love” adapted to be “Addicted to LOST”. I hope they run it again… it was a fun commercial!

LOST: Fire+Water

Spoilers ahead…

What was THAT all about? Charlie has had a problem for a few episodes now watching how Locke is interacting with Claire, and feeling jealous. I think between Michael going off to find Walt, Sayid vs Ana Lucia, and Charlie vs Locke, we’re seeing the beginnings of how the survivors might eventually split. Charlie has definately become an outsider.

I thought it was interesting that a couple of things people on the web have been discussing were mentioned on the show. First, Hurley called the people in the tail section “tailies”, which seems to be the general nickname people have given them on the web. The second was that while he and Libby were washing clothes, Libby said something about the washer and dryer being a lot newer than the rest of the things down in the hatch.

I’d assumed that the newer looking washer and dryer were just a continuity error on the show, but since the characters mentioned it, there might be more to it. Everyone’s been assuming that people have been down in that hatch for a long time with no contact with the outside world…. now we know that probably isn’t true.

Other random thoughts:

It surprised me that Locke didn’t destroy the statues he took from Charlie, but put them in the vault instead.

I think the reason Hurley recognized Libby was not because he stepped on her foot (he was at the front of the plane, and she was at the back!, but because she was a nurse or possibly a patient in the hospital he was in.

Eko was marking trees, I think because he intended to build a chapel there. From the way he was sifting through the ashes after the fire, it looks like Charlie burned the area that Eko marked.

In the previews, we see Sun taken away. It looks like The Others are going to try and get Jin to go after Sun, which will cause him to leave the group in the same why that Michael was coaxed away.