Mythology of Lost - The Island - Structures - The Ruins

The Ruins

There are ruins on the Island, many with hieroglyphs. In "Live Together, Die Alone", while at sea, Sayid, Jin, and Sun sight the remnants of a massive statue standing upon a rock in the surf. All that is left is a large, four-toed marble foot broken off at the ankle. Sayid remarks that he does not know which is more disquieting: the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that the foot has only four toes. It has been compared to the Colossus of Rhodes. The full statue, viewed from the back, appears from a distance in the fifth season episode "LaFleur". The statue seen from behind has lion-like ears, a crown on the head, long hair, an ankh in each hand, and ancient Egyptian dress. The statue is named Taweret, the Egyptian god of fertility and life.

At the base of the statue is a secret chamber in which Jacob resides. All four elements of earth, water, fire, and air are represented in this chamber. "The fire pit in the middle of the room consisted of flames rising from black sand with a ring of water surrounding all of it." The room also housed a weaving loom in which Jacob is shown creating a tapestry. In addition, painted on the ceiling was "an ancient Egyptian astronomical chart which refers to the stars and planets, time, and the goddess Taweret."

Further ruins are revealed in "The Brig" when the Others tie Locke's father to the broken base of a large, stone column. Toward the end of the third season, Ben tells Richard to continue leading the rest of the Others to the Temple, and in "Meet Kevin Johnson" sends Alex, Karl, and Rousseau to the same location. His map marks it with a Dharma Initiative symbol, but the Temple has also been mentioned as something the Monster is in place to protect. In addition, in "The Shape of Things to Come", after Alex is killed, Ben summons the Smoke Monster in a secret chamber hidden in his closet whose stone door contains hieroglyphics. In "There's No Place Like Home Pt 3", when Ben enters the Orchid Station, behind the official Dharma built station, he finds what appear to be ancient tombstones covered with unknown hieroglyphs on his way to the final room, where an ancient man-made wheel rests that is used to move the island. In the fifth season episode, "This Place is Death" shows a better view of what appears to be the Temple that Ben will one day order Richard to lead his people to, which is directly guarded by the Monster. In "Whatever Happened, Happened", Richard Alpert is seen taking a young Benjamin Linus into the temple itself as a means of healing a fatal gunshot wound. Alpert notes beforehand that Ben will emerge a fundamentally different person. It is revealed in "Dead is Dead" that the structure the viewers see is merely a wall concealing the temple and the actual temple itself is a mile away on the other side of the wall.

There is also a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the surface of the Island. The lair of the Monster lies in these tunnels, beneath the site of the Temple wall, and another chamber was used by the Others to isolate a hydrogen bomb with a breach in its casing, which lies beneath the Dharma Initiative barracks. Some of these tunnels are marked on the blast door map in the Swan Station.

In the sixth season episode "Across the Sea", young Jacob and his unnamed fraternal twin brother are shown a cave with a waterfall; in "The End," Desmond descends into the cave and discovers an ancient chamber. In the chamber there is a pool of electromagnetic energy with a large hieroglyphic stone that sits at the center covering a mysterious hole. When it is removed by Desmond, the water and energy drain from the pool, an infernal red glow infuses the chamber, and the island begins to violently react. When Jack returns the stone, the water begins to flow into the pool again and the electromagnetic energy returns.