Carmen Reyes

Season: 1–6, Episodes: 8, Faction: N/A

Overview

Carmen Reyes was Hurley’s mother. She was a devout Catholic, and was fluent in Spanish. She was often overbearing towards Hurley. Carmen had at least one other son, Diego Reyes.

Childbirth

Fertility (Vegetation)

Fertility (Water)

Protection

Sky

3×10 – Tricia Tanaka Is Dead

Her husband, David Reyes left the family about 17 years before Hurley came to the Island. (“Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”)

1×18 – Numbers

When Hurley became reclusive and practically catatonic after the deck accident, she had him committed to the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. He later moved back in with her after his condition improved. She is the heir to Hurley’s millions, although she doesn’t know this.

When Hugo won the lottery using the Numbers, she was affected by his bad luck as well. Her father-in-law Tito died of a heart attack during a press conference; her other son, Diego, moved back in after his wife Lisa (whom Carmen refers to as “that whore”) eloped with a waitress; and she broke her ankle while getting out of the car to see the new house Hugo had bought her with his winnings. The house subsequently caught fire. (“Numbers”)

3×10 – Tricia Tanaka Is Dead

She later shared a mansion with Hugo in Los Angeles. Worried that Hugo was obsessed with the idea of being cursed, she called her estranged husband — he moved back in and they became intimate again, to Hugo’s disgust. (“Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”)

After Hugo’s return

4×12 – There’s No Place Like Home, Part 1

When Hurley returned from the Island she was still in a relationship with her husband, and both met Hurley at a private military base just west of Honolulu, Hawaii, along with other family members of some of the Oceanic Six.

A short time later she threw Hurley a surprise birthday party in the theme of a tropical island. She told Hurley “Jesus Christ is not a weapon,” after he misunderstood the party as someone breaking into the mansion and prepared himself to use one of Carmen’s many religious figurines. (“There’s No Place Like Home, Part 1”)

5×02 – The Lie

She was out shopping when Hurley initially returned after breaking out of the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. When she returned, she was surprised to see “a dead Pakistani” on her couch. Later, she questioned Hugo about why he was on the news. Hurley confessed all the events on The Island to her. She told him that she believed him as he broke down into tears. (“The Lie”)

6×12 – Everybody Loves Hugo

In the flash sideways, Mrs. Reyes attended a banquet at the Golden State Natural History Museum honoring her son Hugo as Man of the Year. After the banquet, she expressed some frustration that Hugo had not found a girlfriend, and told him that she had set him up on a blind date with his grandfather Tito’s neighbor’s daughter Rosalita. (“Everybody Loves Hugo”)

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Related Character Images

Decoded Family Members

Tito Reyes (Father-in-law)

David Reyes (Husband)

Hurley Reyes (Son)

Decoded Season 1 & 2 Characters

Kate Austen

Sayid Jarrah

Nadia Jaseem

Margo Shephard

Woo-Jung Paik

Mrs. Paik

Mary Jo

Key Episode(s) to Decoding the Character

1x18 "Numbers"

3x10 "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead"

6x12 "Everybody Loves Hugo"

(Nekhabit) Depicted either as a vulture or anthropomorphically, wearing a vulture headdress, Nekhbet is the Goddess of Upper (that is, southern) Egypt, counterpart of Wadjet, Goddess of Lower (northern) Egypt. The two Goddesses together thus represent the sovereignty of Egypt united and are often juxtaposed in heraldic fashion. Nekhbet has an independent set of associations as well, however. Some of these derive from the ideas Egyptians had about the vulture. In PT utterance 570, for instance, the deceased king places himself under the protection of Nekhbet with an unusual appeal: “I will never swallow the Eye of Horus so that men may say: ‘He [Horus] is dead because of it.’ I will never swallow a limb of Osiris so that men may say: ‘He [Osiris] is dead because of it.” The vulture, because it feeds on carrion, is, so to speak, a predator free from blame, a condition which the king wishes to share (compare J. Gwyn Griffiths’ remarks, in relation to PT utterance 270, on “the hostile interpretation of animal sacrifices which was so marked a feature of Egyptian religious thought,” in Griffiths 1991, 153). The association of the vulture with purity of food underlies the identification of the deceased with Nekhbet with regard to nourishment in CT spell 863: “If N. be hungry, Nekhbet will be hungry; if N. be thirsty, Nekhbet will be thirsty.” That the role of Nekhbet here follows from the nature of the vulture is clear from the spell’s opening line, “The dead are swallowed for you,” as well as from a passage near the end which refers to “the vulture of whom the Gods are afraid and whom the souls fear in N.’s abode, just as they are afraid of the Eye of Horus.” The hieroglyphic sign of the vulture stands for the word mut, ‘mother’. This symbolism bears especially upon the Goddess Mut, of course, but it affects Nekhbet as well, who is more closely identified with the vulture than Mut is. Nekhbet’s maternal quality is manifest in her role as the nurse of Horus. CT spell 16 says of Horus, for instance, “Isis bore him, Khabet [Nekhbet] brought him up,” while the ferry-boat of CT spell 398 has for its aft mooring-post “Nekhbet with her arms about Horus.” A spell to ease childbirth (no. 61 in Borghouts) invokes “Nekhbet the Nubian,” among other deities, in order to charge a clay figure of a dwarf (cf. Bes) which the operator uses to conjure the woman giving birth. Nekhbet is also spoken of as the “guide of Re” on his daily journey to the west, rising opposite him at the sunrise and hovering over him at what is his daily birth (P. Carlsberg I, B. I, 24-27/Neugebauer and Parker vol. I, pp. 45-46). Since the sun was thought of as rising opposite the land of Punt (Somalia), this might explain Nekhbet’s association with Nubia in the childbirth spell.

CT spells 956 and 957 are, effectively, spells for ‘transforming into’ or invoking Nekhbet, albeit spell 957, which is much better preserved than 956, bears the title “To become Ma’et“. In both spells the operator affirms “I have ascended to the upper sky, and I have fashioned Nekhbet; I have descended to the lower sky, and I have fashioned Sekhmet,” but in 957 has been inserted “I have traversed the middle sky … because I am Ma’et in these manifestations of hers which are upon and in the middle of Nekhbet, the complete Vulture.” Ma’et’s inhabitation within Nekhbet seems to parallel the operator’s statement in both spells that “Nekhbet has installed me in the midst of herself <lest> Seth should see me when I reappear.” Nekhbet seems to mediate here between Ma’et’s function, which pertains to the order and harmony of the cosmos, and the personal protection afforded to mortals by Sekhmet in the so-called ‘lower sky’, i.e., the sky of the underworld. A spell to ward off infectious diseases (no. 14 in Borghouts) invokes Nekhbet, “who lifted up the earth unto the sky for her father.” Nekhbet’s ‘father’ here is presumably Re. “Do come,” the spell continues, “that you may tie the two plumes closely around me. Then I will live on and be sound.” The spell is to be said over a pair of vulture plumes and the person to receive protection is to be stroked by them.

At Nekhbet’s cult center Nekheb (el-Kab; known to the Greeks as Eileithyiaspolis), inscriptions make reference to seven “arrows” of Nekhbet, these being the same “arrows”—that is, demonic potencies—wielded at other places by Bast or Tutu. At el-Kab, Nekhbet delivers seven speeches charging each “arrow” to the protection of the pharaoh. These “arrows” are, in effect, forces normally malevolent, but whom the Goddess is able to enlist to act according to her own will. Several of the demons shown at el-Kab have the head of the animal associated with Seth, showing the ability of Nekhbet to marshal Seth’s powers against, among others, the demons of disease and misfortune under the control of Sekhmet and known as her “murderers” (for a complete account of the arrows of Nekhbet at el-Kab, see Capart 1940).

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Further Info

Patron of: Sovereignty of the king.

Appearance: A woman with the head of a vulture.

Description: Originally the patron of Upper Egypt in the early Old Kingdom, she changed over time to be the protector of the king (especially in infancy) and the mother of his divine nature. Nekhbet’s vulture is found on the pharaonic crown, along with the uraeus. In her form representing the king’s power, she is shown wearing a white crown and carrying the symbols of life and power in her talons.

In the New Kingdom her role expanded to be the protector of all infants as well as being the goddess of childbirth.

Worship: Worshipped throughout Egypt, her cult center was the city of Nekheb.

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Nekhbet

Nekhbet (Nekhebet, Nechbet) was the predynastic vulture goddess who was originally a goddess of a city, but grew to become patron of Upper Egypt, a guardian of mothers and children, and one of the nebty (the ‘two ladies’) of the pharaoh. “She of Nekhb”, named after the town Nekhb (El Kab), was a local goddess who, with the rise of the pharaohs, became the great goddess of all of Upper Egypt, while the other ‘lady’, Uatchet (Uatch-Ura, Wadjet), became goddess of Lower Egypt. These two goddesses were linked closely together due to the Egyptian idea of duality – there must be a goddess for both of the Two Lands. Nekhbet became Upper Egypt (the south) personified.

She was depicted as a woman wearing the crown of Upper Egypt or the vulture headdress, a woman with the head of a vulture, as a full snake or as a full vulture with the White Crown on her head, her wings spread in protection while holding the shen (shn) symbol of eternity in her talons. She was often shown with Uatchet, who was shown as an identical goddess – either as a woman or a snake – wearing the crown of Lower Egypt.

Nekhbet was given the title the ‘White Crown’, and depicted with this crown, because of her link with the rulership of Upper Egypt. By dynastic times, she was more a personification than an actual goddess and so Nekhbet was often used (with Uatchet) as a heraldic device around the sun disk or the royal name and were part of the royal insignia. The earliest found representation of the nebty title was in the reign of Anedjib, a pharaoh of the 1st Dynasty. From the 18th Dynasty onwards, she began to be represented as protecting the royal women in the form of one of the twin uraei on the headdresses of the queens.

Linked to the pharaoh and the crown, she often appears in war and offertory scenes, in vulture form hovering over the head of the pharaoh, holding the shen symbol and the royal flail. Yet she also is shown sometimes as a divine mother of the pharaoh, suckling him herself. It was in her mothering role that she was known as the ‘Great White Cow of Nekhb’, where she was described as having pendulous breasts. She was seen as the pharaoh’s own protective goddess, right from his birth until his death.

It was mostly during the later times that she was venerated as a goddess of birth, specialising in the protection and suckling of both the gods and the pharaohs. Unlike Heqet and Taweret, she was never a popular goddess of the people due to her very close association with rulership. It was only during the New Kingdom that the people started worshiping her as a protector of mothers and children as well as being the goddess of childbirth. Until then, she had strictly been a protector of the pharaoh.

In Southern Africa, the name for an Egyptian vulture is synonymous with the term applied to lovers, for vultures like pigeons are always seen in pairs. Thus mother and child remain closely bonded together. Pairing, bonding, protecting, loving are essential attributes associated with a vulture. Because of its immense size and power and its ability to sore high up in the sky, the vulture is considered to be nearer to God who is believed to reside above the sky. Thus the qualities of a vulture are associated with Godliness. On the other hand the wide wingspan of a vulture may be seen as all encompassing and providing a protective cover to its infants. The vulture when carrying out its role as a mother and giving protection to its infants may exhibit a forceful nature whilst defending her young. All these qualities inspired the imagination of the Ancient Egyptians. They adopted what seemed to them at the time to be motherly qualities, the qualities of protecting and nurturing their young.

— Ma-Wetu, The Kiswahili-Bantu Research Unit for the Advancement of the Ancient Egyptian Language

Nekhbet was thought to be the wife of Hapi, in his Upper Egyptian aspect. She was also linked to Horus in his role of god of Upper Egypt. Due to her vulture form, she was linked to the goddess Mut, the mother goddess and wife of Amen. Both Mut and Nekhbet were a particular type of vulture – the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus). It was the griffon vulture that was usually related to the goddesses and to royalty.

Yet she also had a fierce side, as most Egyptian protective deities did. She was linked to war and combat. In many war scenes, it is she who hovered above the pharaoh, protecting him from his enemies. In the story of Horus and Set, when Horus is trying to find and rout the followers of Set, Horus pursued them in the form of a burning, winged disk, attended by both Nekhbet and Uatchet as crowned snakes, one on each side of him. In this form, she was given the title ‘Eye of Ra’, and was thus linked to the other goddesses who took this title – Bast, Tefnut, Sekhmet, Hathor, Isis, and her ‘twin’ in duality, Uatchet.

There are actually two sections to Nekhb … In a smaller enclosure is the Temple of Nekhbet, with its several pylons, hypostyle hall in front, a mamissi (birth house) dedicated to Nekhbet (the embodiment of Hathor). The temple was begun around 2700 BC, and enlarged in by later pharaohs of the 18th through 30th dynasties, including Tuthmosis III, Amenophis II, and the Ramessids The second part of the ruins is the necropolis, which is situated on a rocky outcrop.

— El Kab and El Ahmar, TourEgypt

A temple of Nekhbet was built at Nekhb, along with the temple’s birth house, smaller temples, the temple’s sacred lake and some early cemeteries. It is possible that it was first built during the Early Period, but major building projects were started during the 18th Dynasty. The remains of the temple, though, belong to the works of the pharaohs of the 29th and 30th Dynasties. Nekhbet was venerated at this temple, inside the town of Nekhb itself, throughout most of Egypt’s long history.

From local goddess of a predynastic town to the goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhbet became one of Egypt’s symbols. From the personal protector of the pharaoh and she who bestowed the white crown to the pharaoh, she became the symbol of rulership in ancient Egypt. And from the wet nurse of pharaoh to the guardian of mothers and infants, she took on the role of protector, she moved from the pharaoh’s own goddess to one who looked after mothers and children through the whole land. She was worshiped as a goddess as well as being the personification of the south, the vulture goddess who was one half of a manifestation of the idea of duality that was a basis of ma’at for as long as the pharaohs ruled Egypt. She was more than just a goddess – she was half of the land of Egypt itself.

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Wiki Info

In Egyptian mythology, Nekhbet (also spelt Nechbet, and Nekhebit) was an early predynastic local goddess who was the patron of the city of Nekheb, her name meaning of Nekheb. Ultimately, she became the patron of Upper Egypt and one of the two patron deities for all of Ancient Egypt when it was unified.

She was seen as a goddess who had chosen to adopt the city, and consequently depicted as the Egyptian white vulture, a creature that the Egyptians thought only existed as females (not knowing that, lacking sexual dimorphism, the males are identical). They were presumed to be reproducing via parthenogenesis.

Egypt’s oldest oracle was the shrine of Nekhbet at Nekheb, the original necropolis or city of the dead. It was the companion city to Nekhen, the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt at the end of the Predynastic period (c. 3200–3100 BC) and probably, also during the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC). The original settlement on the Nekhen site dates from Naqada I or the late Badarian cultures. At its height, from about 3400 BC, Nekhen had at least 5,000 and possibly as many as 10,000 inhabitants.

The priestesses of Nekhbet were called muu (mothers) and wore robes of vulture feathers.

Later, as with Wadjet, Nekhbet’s sister, became patron of the pharaohs, in her case becoming the personification of Upper Egypt. The images of these two primal goddesses became the protecting deities for all of Egypt, also known as the “two ladies.” In art, Nekhbet was depicted as the white vulture (representing purification), always seen on the front of pharaoh’s double crown along with Wadjet. Nekhbet usually was depicted hovering, with her wings spread above the royal image, clutching a shen symbol (representing infinity, all, or everything), frequently in both of her claws. As patron of the pharaoh, she was sometimes seen to be the mother of the divine aspect of the pharaoh, and it was in this capacity that she was Mother of Mothers, and the Great White Cow of Nekheb.

The vulture hieroglyph was the uniliteral sign used for the glottal sound (3) including words such as mother, prosperous, grandmother, and ruler. In some late texts of the Book of the Dead, Nekhbet is referred to as Father of Fathers, Mother of Mothers, who hath existed from the Beginning, and is Creatrix of this World.

When pairing began to occur in the Egyptian pantheon, giving most of the goddesses a husband, Nekhbet was said to become the wife of Hapy, a deity of the inundation of the Nile. Given the early and constant association of Nekhbet with being a good mother, in later myths she was said to have adopted children.

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