Scroll over gap for people who are coming to the series late. The OP assumes you have seen all episodes through the end of Season 5. Proceed at your own preferences. No spoilers for regular watchers, but merely notice of the existence of extra information.
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On ABC’s recap of the Incident, it reveals the true identity of the stautue. For months, we have debated which deity it was, and for the recap to simply say who it is, was kind of weird. It isn’t a major spoiler for me, but the reveal struck me as odd.
I don’t want to reveal the identity in the OP, but be warned that unboxed spoilers regarding the identity of the statue are welcomed in the subsequent posts. Please limit it only to this “spoiler” and any information in seasons 1-5.
In order to save others from loading up an extremely slow page, (at least it was for me), here is the relevant section
And as the camera pulls back, we see what we’ve been waiting to see since we first glimpsed that four-toed foot over three years ago… the towering, majestic statue of the Egyptian goddess Taweret
Don’t know if it means anything significant to anybody though.
Still doesn’t really explain the toes though. The actual statue on the deity’s wikipedia page looks like it has all five, and they aren’t very human like either.
Lion legs but hippopotamus feet, perhaps? Hippos have four toes (do a Google image search with “hippo toes” for pictures). The Taweret statue posted in this lost_tv livejournal entry seems to have four toes.
Elsewhere on that ABC page is a recap of part 2 of The Incident, which clarified one thing for me (although perhaps this was obvious to others).
That the John Locke who has been walking through the island for the past few episodes, despite having been killed by Ben in Los Angeles, is in fact Esau/The Man in Black/the other guy on the beach with Jacob.
It seems to me Taweret is typically depicted in what is arguably the most famous painting in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Judgment of Osiris. She’s the goddess who will devour your soul if you didn’t pass.
That’s the thing though, they didn’t give the LOST statue a paw or even a [del]hoof[/del] whatever the hell a hippo’s foot is, they gave it a human foot and human toes, only minus one. I suppose the number of toes could have only been just to give a subtle clue as to the identity of the statue, but to avoid going so far as to have a giant paw that would have really thrown the internets into a fit; but it just feels like there should be more to it than that. Also, unless it is missing a thumb, it does appear to have all five fingers.
I’m not a “they’re making it up as they go” critic of Lost, but I’m really not sure they had any idea who the statue would be when they showed the foot. It was originally going to have 6 toes but the ABC execs said that was too weird.
Huh. I’m not usually in that camp either, but this certainly falls into it.
ETA: I also find it amusing that something on this show was actually deemed “too weird”. If any show would have(and appears to have) free reign, it would be LOST.
My biggest problem with this whole revelation is that this is clearly a male figure. Even for Egyptian art, fond as they are of androgynous figures, this is a male figure. Not a fecund female one. I’m not saying it isn’t Taweret, because if the creators say it is, it is. I’m just thinking they shouldn’t have made Herlook so much like Sobek, repairer of evil.
Whoo! I called it back when we first saw her in the episode LeFleur.
Okay, well, I didn’t so much as call it, as I was convinced by the comparison shots gathered by others. But then many quickly drifted away from that theory, when it seemed to be an almost perfect match for me. It was bugging me how a lot of other sites and even Jay & Jack’s podcast were still calling it Anubis.
Hippos have four toes (do a Google image search with “hippo toes” for pictures). The Taweret statue posted in this 
