(Click to Enlarge)
Thanks to Bob for this very useful Wiki page on the Symbols.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hieroglyphs/german-Gardiner-list-translated
Request a ScreencapIf you would like to request a screencap please fill out the form below along with details of the screen you would like captured. We can't promise to do them all but I will try to do the interesting ones. Please leave as many details as possible to make finding the image easier.
NOTE 1 : Only request screens for up to the last 2 Episode
NOTE 2 : We cannot respond to every request but I hope to manage to post the most interesting ones.
NOTE 3 : Screencaps from Trailers and Promos can be found in the Spoilers Section
NOTE 4 : Please wait at least 2hrs after an episode has aired whilst we post our screencaps before requesting new ones, our team of screencappers normally capture over 90% of all requests
Ben's Door (*Updated*)
(Comments: 52)
Labels:
The Shape of Things to Come
Post Your Comment (looking for the old comment form?)
N O T E
Spoilers, Name-calling, personal attacks, spamming, excessive self-promotion, condescending pomposity, general assiness, racism, sexism, any-other-ism, homophobia, acrophobia, and destructive (versus constructive) criticism will get you BANNED from the party.
If you have a problem, do NOT post it in the comments, email me here.
Subscribe to our 
Follow our 
Sign up to our 
52 Comments:
This HAS to be related to the four-toed giant statue foot that they saw from Desmond's boat!
oh, and "first" :D
I swear there is just something very strange about this door. I can't put my finger on it and it seems like more than one set of peoples have drawn or carved it.
And what the Jacob is THAT anyway? There are so many secret 'Hatches' in Ben's hut one wonders just who lived there prior to him and why the rest of the 'Others' appeared oblivious to it.
I mean really, why gas 'em when apparently there are all these catacombs they coulda slipped through!
Lovin' it.
This door is totally cool, i can't wait till we get to see what the heck is in there.
Im surprised none of them went back in there after he came out..
i see a jesus fish on the door.
Another one here:-
http://www.guardians.net/egypt/hieroglyphs/hiero-translator.htm
gives different symbols...
Do hieroglyphs really map to letters?!? Who came up with that one...?!?
This ones a bit better...
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/egypt/translator.html
None of these seem to make sense, though... where's the vertical fish? The man? etc...
thanks for the link bob, but i think it generates the same letters... :)
not sure how it works, but you can clearly see some of the same symbols from the chart....
also i think the key is the fish in the middle...could mean something completely different though...
Yep - my 2nd link gives the same alphabet as the 1st. It's much clearer in the 2nd, though, and has titles. You can zoom right in on the symbols on the 2nd link (CTRL and ScrollWheel in Internet Explorer on PC).
Have a look here:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hieroglyphs/german-Gardiner-list-translated
In particular, "Man With Weapon". And there's V7 which looks like the fish, but ... "schn"?!? The man with the weapon likes Peach Schnappes, perhaps?
I'm out of time - highly recommend this Wikipedia page though, LOADS of symbols!
yes bob,
great link!!
i see sooo many more symbols now!!
the V7 i think it is right for the fish...and many other other markings that look like scratches a are a bit more clearer....
w6... boiler?!? Nah...
Let us know if you work anything out. I'm not too good with these things...
Quick, where'd I put the Rosetta Stone? Damn thing is always getting lost around here.
A lot of those symbols seem to lead to dead ends. Or... Maybe I don't know the first thing about hieroglyphics. It's probably the latter. ;)
ODI posted a chart for us!
The fish symbol predates Jesus. I just googled it.
The pre-Christian history of the fish symbol:
The fish symbol has been used for millennia worldwide as a religious symbol associated with the Pagan Great Mother Goddess. The fish symbol "was so revered throughout the Roman empire that Christian authorities insisted on taking it over, with extensive revision of myths to deny its earlier female-genital meanings...
Thanks for posting this - I wanted to ask for a screenshot of the door last night but my computer was acting up.
In case it is useful to anyone, I've posted a recap of the episode, highlighting new answers and new questions, on my blog...
One of the symbols mean "to summon" or "servant", and another one means "power" or "attack"
the one that has a black blot under the arm is "to summon" or "sevant"
I think that early Christians were thinking more about Jesus' call for "fishers of men" rather than female genitals. :o)
I have a theory about the door which ties in everything nicely in my eyes. Since we already know they can bend time on the island they can obviously bend space too, ie: time travel. This door allows Ben to travel to the desert (remember the desert polar bear with the darma colar!) Ben doesn't control the smoke monster but rather the smoke monster compensates for any time anomalies in the present on the island. So Ben goes threw time (forward) and kills the dudes, so when he comes back the smoke monster takes care of them because if they don't exist in the future they cant exist in the present. Anyone? Anyone?
The symbols remind me of the things that John could see when he was trapped underneath the blast door in the Hatch
top right is a symbol that, among other things, refers to "ritual Book" - so if the top left is the symbol for "old man" (its similar but not exact), then the top line refers to an old man with a sacred ritual book. Could that be Widmore and the Ledger of the Black Rock?
I'm not sure how the fish plays in but we have a man with a weapon (represents power and strength) followed by a round symbol that means "to acquire or to get" and then a form that looks like some sort of celtic cross.
The best I can figure is that it trys to read as this:
"The old man has the ritual book.
(Fish) must use its power to get (celtic cross)."
If Ben went back in time, he could perhaps get rid of people in the present. Going to the future would not have the same effect. If you kill me tomorrow, that won't make me not exist now. But if you go back and kill me yesterday...
the eye on the door can mean "awake" or "to watch," so Ben could have awakened Smokey, or the "watch" thing could refer to Cerberus being the guard of the underworld.
I agree with Anastasia, the man at the top in Hyroglyphics means to call servant, the Fish, means to protect and the man holding the stick (i think its supposed to be a spear) means to hit/strike/instruct i cant quite work out what the bomb looking thing or the celtic looking cross mean yet.
I like your theory Super Blogger Girl!
is that a troll or some kind of monster and claw at the bottom of the door. Maybe something trying to claw out? or am I just seeing things....
i'm not convinced it's a celtic cross...no religious connontations have been seen so far...thinking it is a power turbine or a wind turbine...
Some of the glyphs are determinative & sound glyphs used to form a complete word. Not all glyphs are nouns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinative
The glyphs appear to be:
A26-S29-M17-D12:N35
V7-A24-W24-Aa27
Which I believes comes out as "The pupil calls her servant." It looks like someone defaced the door, there is a mark through the cross glyph.
If Ben went back in time, he could perhaps get rid of people in the present. Going to the future would not have the same effect. If you kill me tomorrow, that won't make me not exist now. But if you go back and kill me yesterday...
That might be true if only one of the parties involved could travel in time.
In 2008, I go back to 2004 and kill Ben's daughter. Ben goes to 2005 and kills me.
Tyler,
I agree with you some what. I am not sure of the meaning, but I did find a chart of Determinative Egyptian Symbols and posted them on site.
I can not add it too this post, because Dark created the original post, but here is a link:
Determinative Signs in Egyptian
You guys seem to be more patient with this than me, but I agree with SMOKEY BITCH. I think these symbols are from different cultures. Aestheticly, they are very different. And why not? This door seems to have been here for a very long time. And if it has to do with time-travel, this would make perfect sense.
I studied hieroglyphics in college, so I looked up my old dictionaries to try figure this one out. The best I can translate (I only took 3 semesters, so I'm not a pro at this) is that is has something to do with summoning protection. The top row and bottom row symbols are grouped together as words, the top meaning summon, the bottom meaning to protect or repel, but the problem is that the glyphs are not in the correct order to form these words, so I don't know if the people who drew the glyphs are wrong, or if I just haven't found the exact variation yet. Also, there's one symbol that's partial hidden, but it kind of looks like "nb" which means master or lord, so it could mean "the master summons protection" or something like that. Oh, and that symbol on the left isn't a fish, it's a rope--and it should not be that pointy on top. If I figure out more I'll try to post back.
It's a fish bisquit, of course!!! :)
Seriously though, when I click on the image why doesn't it get much bigger? Very annoying when trying to look at something like this. I'll take what I can get though.
I taught this stuff for 25 years
It says
MAN WITH BIG FISH NO SMOKE---
and then what appears to be the symbol for Crack Pipe.
you guys
"The fish symbol predates Jesus. I just googled it."
You really had to google that? I don't mean to sound mean, but the hebrews were slaves to the egyptians (who used hieroglyphics) about 3000 years before jesus ever existed. jesus was writing scriptures in hebrew and i'm sure that if the egyptians had a more sensible written language they would've used that instead of dingbats. this is all basic old testament stuff...
Ah, I didn't take time to try to dechiper anything at all, because I'm sure I'd only find what I wanted to see... BUT I do like the people who keep refering to summoning and servants- cause we're convinced at mi casa, that that's where old smokey gets his commands...
*and i'm sure that must be some obvious thing for everyone, but we're just excited to get a juicy episode :)
As some of you may remember, way back in season 1(or 2?), Rousseau said the "smoke monster" was a protective/security system, so the hieroglyphics make sense...
---------------
Sarah said...
"The fish symbol predates Jesus. I just googled it."
You really had to google that? I don't mean to sound mean, but the hebrews were slaves to the egyptians (who used hieroglyphics) about 3000 years before jesus ever existed. jesus was writing scriptures in hebrew and i'm sure that if the egyptians had a more sensible written language they would've used that instead of dingbats. this is all basic old testament stuff...
-----------------
I hate to correct your correction but Jesus was 1500 years after Moses..not 3000
And the language of the NT was not Hebrew. Most of them spoke Aramaic and the language of the day was Greek
and Last Jesus wrote no scriptures...sciptures were written about him..he never penned a word
So I guess an education is a good thing :)
"(Fish) must use its power to get (celtic cross)."
Sure. If you assume they read left to right. All the figures are facing or moving right to left, suggesting the text be read that way too.
About the direction to read the glyphs- You actually are supposed to read them INTO the faces of the glyphs, so in this case, left to right.
I wish the glyphs inside the cartouche were clearer, because then we might be able to translate someone's name out of this. (The bottom right oval with glyphs inside looks like it could be a cartouche, which is the way Egyptians designated a person's name.)
marie you sound like you know what your talking about, so if you had to guess... what would the name be in the cartouche... if u can make any of it out
I think this show is making us all insane. any non-lost person who read this would be really worried about us.
I think it's great that some of us get to use our expensive educations for something interesting and useful, even if we're not getting paid.
It seems that the glyphs on the left and bottom are south american looking. Not really Myan, which are square-ish, very intricate, and usually are animal or human heads. The stacked glyphs on the left seem to vaguely resemble native american totem poles.
About the fish. Is this Ezra James Sharkington? Can someone zoom in to see if there is a Dharma logo on him? LOL
Just a thought...
I googled "south pacific hieroglyphics" just to see if there were any similar types of communication used in areas other than ancient Egypt. Turns out there is a big mystery over some cave drawings that resemble Egyptian hieroglyphics found in Autralia. "The key is Australia"???
If this helps, here is another picture of the door from Entertainment Weekly...
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20195369_3,00.html
In response to Frank, I really couldn't give a good guess as to the name in the cartouche at all. My best guesses (if it's an actual word) were "mother" and "brightness". But usually glyphs inside cartouches are not words to be found in a dictionary, they're glyphs representing sounds, that when put together, create a name. The problems with this glyph is that I can't distinguish clearly what type of bird is at the top, and the symbol/s on the bottom half can't be found in any egyptian dictionary. Also, the cartouche is verticle where it should be horizontal to match the other words. In short, everything about these glyphs are very poorly put together.
As for the other symbols on the wall, I agree that they don't even look that Egyptian to me. It looks like there's a mix of cultures represented on this wall.
I know this will sound incredibly crazy, but the more I look at this door the more I see what appears to be a Wild boar on the right hand side. Anyone else see it? I know it is a stretch!!
totems are also prevalent in many primitive South Pacific cultures. The bottom left look more like something you'd see at a Luau and not a pow-wow.