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Hieroglyphs

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Close up view of the Timer hieroglyphs, as seen by Desmond. ("Live Together, Die Alone")

From Rachel Blake's Blog. (TLE)

See Countdown timer for information on the equipment found in the Swan station.

Hieroglyphs are writing systems that use iconic symbols to communicate messages. Multiple ancient cultures used hieroglyphs, but the most famous variety are Egyptian hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs typically visually represent their meaning when read alone. Multiple hieroglyphs can also be read phonetically to sound out a word. The Egyptians wrote left-to-right or vice versa, but key symbols such as humans and animals were always drawn to face back to the beginning of the sentence.

1 Hieroglyph sequences
2 Hieroglyph reference
3 See also
4 External links

Hieroglyph sequences

Countdown timer

The first hieroglyph sequence to have been shown in Lost was displayed by the countdown timer in the Swan. In The Lost Experience, it was found in Rachel Blake's Iceland 02 blog post, where they are connected to the Valenzetti Equation.

These hieroglyphs, known as "folded cloth", "curl", "fire drill", "vulture" and "stick", correspond to symbols S29, Z7, U29, G1, Z6 from Gardiner's Sign List. The vulture and stick spell "evil enemy".

At Comic Con 2006, producer Damon Lindelof translated this sequence to mean "underworld", which is now considered the official translation. (Official 'Lost' Podcast/July 31, 2006) Another translation has also been found in Raymond O. Faulkner's A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, shown below.

Possible translation from Faulkner's dictionary

Ben's secret door

A secret door in Ben's house in the Barracks bore symbols resembling hieroglyphs. Roughly translated they read "to summon protection...". [1]

Frozen wheel chamber

The frozen wheel used to move the Island is surrounded by rock formations with more hieroglyphs carved into them, similar to Ben's secret door.

Hieroglyphs near the frozen wheel

Hieroglyph reference

The following table summarizes the phonetics and meanings associated with the hieroglyphs seen so far, as well as some related hieroglyphs.

Symbol	Gardiner Code	Phonetics	Additional Stand-alone Meanings
folded cloth	S29	s	"health"
curl	Z7	w	hieratic form of G43
quail chick	G43	w
fire drill	U29	DA	"healthy"
vulture	G1	A	"evil-"
stick	Z6	determinative (modifies previous word)	hieratic form of A13 or A14
bound man	A13	det.	"enemy","rebel","foreigner"
wounded man	A14	det.	"to die","dead enemy"
man with stick	A24	det.	"hit", "beat", "strength", "strong", "force", "teach", "instruct"