The Oneida Community was a utopian commune that existed from 1848 until 1881.

Like the DHARMA Initiative, members of the Oneida Community were assigned jobs by the community. And like DHARMA, they produced their own line of products. In fact, although the commune has ceased to exist, their silverware business Oneida Limited continues today.

Wikipedia: Oneida Community

Getting back to the more occult roots of this blog:

Popular Mechanics has an Egyptologist weigh in on the hieroglyphics from “Dead is Dead”

Allen agrees that the animal-headed human in the hieroglyphic Ben is fixated on is probably based on Anubis, though he says in actuality, no Egyptian scene looks like what’s shown on Lost. “I suspect that the colossus is also meant to be Anubis, too,” he says. But he points out, it’s actually more of a hybrid of Anubis and Taweret, the demon-wife of the Apep, the Egyptian’s original god of evil. (It’s said that Apep was only present at night, and therefore any evil happenings during the daytime were attributed to Taweret). “The thing on the head definitely looks like Taweret’s, but she never wears a kilt, which is clearly there in the back shot of the colossus. The colossus is probably holding two ankh-signs, like the one Anubis holds in this image, but he’s holding them like Taweret holds the two signs she holds, which are ‘protection’ signs, not ankhs.” Allen also notes that “the four toes on the statue fragment are more Taweret than Anubis, who has a human body and therefore five toes.”

Popular Mechanics: Lost Channels Ancient Egyptian Legend to Explain Smoke Monster (via Electric Children)

Pretty interesting, no? Danny Chaoflux was actually the first person who suggested to me that the Monster might be Apep:

So perhaps the Others are a Taweret & Apep

(Image from Lostpedia)

From the Monster theories page of Lostpedia comes an alternate theory:

In Egyptian mythology, Ammit was the personification of divine retribution for all the wrongs one had committed in life. She dwelt in the Hall of Ma’at, who was the personification of the concept of truth, balance, and order.The hearts of the dead were weighed by Anubis against a feather from Ma’at’s headdress. The hearts of those who were heavy with wrongdoing failed the test were given to Ammit for her to devour. Those whose souls were devoured were not permitted to enter Aaru, having to be restless forever—effectively dying a second time. If the heart was lighter than a feather then the soul was judged by the god of the underworld, Osiris. With the strong Egyptian undertones, especially this season, the monster could be a personification of Ammit. When the monster poses as Yemi, it asks Eko if he is sorry for the wrongdoings in his life. When Eko says no, the monster kills him. We saw in “This Place is Death” that the monster lives in the Temple with the hieroglyphics on it. This temple, which goes underground, could represent the Hall of Ma’at where souls are judged.

I have another idea: the creators of LOST might be creating its own set of Egyptian deities.

Until “Dead is Dead” I was thinking that the Dharma Initiative might have been using Egyptian hieroglyphs as a code (the way the Others use Latin). But the hieroglyphs in the temple in “Dead is Dead” seem to rule that out.

It might also be worth noting that in “Some Like it Hoth,” the lesson Jack erases from the chalk board is on Egyptian hieroglyphs.