David Shephard

Season: 6, Episodes: 4, Faction: N/A

Overview

David Shephard was the son of divorced parents Jack Shephard and Juliet Carlson (whom he lived with), in the flash sideways. He was a gifted pianist. His relationship with Jack was strained, due to their misconstrued expectations of each other. In the original timeline, Juliet never raised a son, and, to his knowledge, Jack never had one either.

Moon

Intelligence (Knowledge)

Death

6×05 – Lighthouse

   

David first appeared after Jack’s return to Los Angeles, when Jack picked him up at St. Mary’s Academy. Back at his apartment, Jack tried to converse with his son, but it ended awkwardly.

   

He tried to talk to David about The Annotated Alice, which was lying in his room, but David just walked out of his room. Later, David opted to stay alone in the apartment while Jack went to visit his mother Margo. Jack asked his mother how she viewed his relationship with David, and she replied that David might just be terrified of him. She noted that David was also visibly upset during Christian (his grandfather)’s funeral.

   

Upon returning home, Jack found his son gone. He went to his ex-wife’s house to see if David was there, but found nobody home. Still, he went inside and into David’s room, where he came across sheet music for Chopin’s “Fantaisie Impromptu“, and pictures of himself and David on the mirror (wearing a baseball hat). Jack listened to the two messages on the answering machine. The first was from the Williams Conservatory confirming David’s slot at 7:00pm on Friday the 24th. The other was a message from Jack himself, from Sydney. Jack looked at his watch and realized the audition must have been taking place right then.

   

Jack arrived at the conservatory, where he saw David playing the piano. A boy commented on how talented David was, while his father told Jack “They are too young to have this kind of pressure”. The boy’s father appeared to be Dogen and referred to David’s “gift.” Afterwards, outside, Jack asked David why he had never told him that he was still playing music, to which David replied that he didn’t want “to fail” in his father’s eyes. Jack relayed how bad his own father made him feel, and told David he never wanted him to feel that way, that he loved him and that, in his eyes, David could never fail. (“Lighthouse”)

6×13 – The Last Recruit

   

A day or two later, David went with his father for the reading of his grandfather’s will and testament. There, they were introduced by the lawyer to Claire Littleton, who told them she was Jack’s half-sister (and thus David’s half-aunt). An emergency at the St. Sebastian Hospital required father and son to leave abruptly, but Jack invited “Aunt Claire” to stay with them. (“The Last Recruit”)

6×16 – What They Died For

   

The next morning, David announced that he’d made breakfast for them, and Jack joked that “opening a box of cereal is not making breakfast,” indicating a marked improvement in the father/son relationship. David reminded Jack about the benefit concert that night, Claire joined them for breakfast, and an alleged Oceanic Airlines representative, called to say that Christian’s casket had been found. (“What They Died For”)

6×17 – The End

   

At St. Sebastian hospital, a presumably-reawakened John Locke stated that Jack (as far as Locke knew) did not have a son.

   

David was later seen at the hospital where his father and mother Juliet, both worked. He asked who would use Jack’s ticket now that Jack had to perform surgery. Jack suggested Claire; David and Juliet agreed. At the concert venue David watched Faraday play the piano on stage with the band. Juliet had to leave for a hospital emergency, then Claire went into labor and Kate (also at the table), followed, thus leaving David alone. (“The End”) David is never shown again after this.

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Related Character Images

   

   

 

David was an LA Dodgers fan (he was seen wearing an LA Dodgers Hat) unlike his dad, Jack, and grandfather, Christian Shephard, both fans of the Boston Red Sox.

L.A. Dodgers (Baseball)

The Los Angeles Dodgers are a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers are members of Major League Baseball’s National League West Division.

Fantaisie-Impromptu

Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. posth. 66, is a solo piano composition and one of his best-known pieces. Some aspects of this piece are similar to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which is also in C-sharp minor.

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Decoded Family Members

Christian Shephard (Grandfather)	Margo Shephard (Grandmother)	Jack Shephard (Father)	Juliet Burke (Mother)	Ray Shephard (Great-Grandfather)	Claire Littleton (Half-Aunt)	Aaron Littleton (Half-Cousin)
Rachel Carlson (Aunt)

Decoded Season 3 & 4 Characters

Richard Alpert

Daniel Faraday

Decoded Season 5 & 6 Characters

Ilana Verdansky

Dogen

Key Episode(s) to Decoding the Character

6x05 "Lighthouse" 6x17 "The End"

(Iah, Ioh) Yah is the total divinity of the moon, as opposed to other Gods—Thoth, Khonsu—who represent certain aspects of it; Yah is the deity in the Egyptian pantheon whose name means ‘Moon’. The corollary to this, however, is that references to Yah are generally more astronomical than theological. One formula, though, which travels through the afterlife literature in diverse forms, seems to be addressed to Yah and Yah alone: in CT spell 93, “for going out into the day,” this formula appears as “O you Sole One who shines as the moon, I go forth among the masses to the gates of the Bark with those who are in the sunshine,” while CT spell 152, “going forth into the day and living after death,” has it as “O you Sole One who rises in the moon, O you Sole One who shines in the moon, I will go up to the sky among a multitude of others when those who are in the sunshine are released, while I have gone forth into this day that I may carry off that foe of mine.” BD spell 2′s version reads, “O Sole One who rises as the moon, O Sole One who shines as the moon, may N. go out with this thy multitude. Deliverer of them that are in the sunlight, open the netherworld,” adding “Lo, N. is gone forth by day to do whatever he may wish among the living,” while BD 65, “for going forth by day and overcoming one’s enemies,” prays of the moon “mayest thou go out with this thy multitude. Mayest thou deliver him that is with the blessed. Open the netherworld,” and adds, “Lo, I am ascended on this day, esteemed; my blessed ones [i.e., deceased relatives] give me life. Brought to me are my enemies, completely subdued, in the Council.” This formula seems to suggest beliefs about the moon which are known from certain other cultures, namely that the moon waxes each month with the souls of the dead ascending into the sky, souls that when the moon wanes are released back to the earth.

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Further Info

Many topics in ancient Egyptian religion can be fraught with complexities. Trying to understand the changing roles of gods such as Re, Osiris and Amun are difficult if not impossible with the limited text available to us today. However, there are none of these more difficult, or certainly more controversial than the Moon God, Yah.

It is interesting that the earliest references to the name Yah (Yaeh) refer to the moon as a satellite of the earth in its physical form. From this, the term becomes conceptualized as a lunar deity, pictorially anthropomorphic but whose manifestations, from hieroglyphic evidence, can include the crescent of the new moon, the ibis and the falcon, which is comparable to the other moon deities, Thoth and Khonsu.

Of course, the complexity and controversy of Yah stem from the term’s similarity to the early form of the name for the modern god of the Jews (Yahweh), Christians and Muslims, as well as the fact that their ancestors were so intermingled with those of the Egyptians. In fact, this distinctive attribute of this god makes research on his ancient Egyptian mythology all the more difficult.

Little is really know of this god’s cult, and there is no references to actual temples or locations where he may have been worshipped.

However, among ancient references, we do seem to find in the Papyrus of Ani several references to the god, though here, his name has been translated as Lah:

In Chapter 2:

“A spell to come forth by day and live after dying. Words spoken by the Osiris Ani:
O One, bright as the moon-god Iah; O One, shining as Iah;
This Osiris Ani comes forth among these your multitudes outside, bringing himself back as a shining one. He has opened the netherworld.
Lo, the Osiris Osiris [sic] Ani comes forth by day, and does as he desires on earth among the living.”

And again, in Chapter 18:

“[A spell to] cross over into the land of Amentet by day. Words spoken by the Osiris Ani:
Hermopolis is open; my head is sealed [by] Thoth.
The eye of Horus is perfect; I have delivered the eye of Horus, and my ornament is glorious on the forehead of Ra, the father of the gods.
Osiris is the one who is in Amentet. Indeed, Osiris knows who is not there; I am not there.
I am the moon-god Iah among the gods; I do not fail.
Indeed, Horus stands; he reckons you among the gods.”

The high point in Yah’s popularity can be found following the the Middle Kingdom when many people immigrated from the Levant and the Hyksos ruled Egypt. Hence, it is likely that contact with the regions of Palestine, Syria and Babylon were important in the development of this god in Egypt. George Hart, in his “A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses” believes that these foreigners in Egypt may have associated Yah with the Akkadian moon-god, Sin, who had an important temple at Harron in north Syria. Like Thoth, Sin was a god of Wisdom, but his other epithets included “Brother of the Earth”, Father of the Sun, Father of Gods, as well as others.

Later during the New Kingdom within the Theban royal family, and not so strangely, even though it was they who expunged these foreign rulers from Egypt, the name of the god Yah was incorporated into their names. The daughter of the 17th Dynasty king, Tao I, was Yah-hotep, meaning “Yah is content”. The name of the next and last ruler of the 17th Dynasty, Kamose, may have also been derived from Yah. His name means “”the bull is born”, and this might be the Egyptian equivalent of the epithet applied to Sin describing him as a “young bull…with strong horns (i.e. the tips of the crescent moon). Also another interpretation of the name of the founder of the 18th Dynasty, Ahmose, is Yahmose, which would mean “Yah is born”. However, this was not the only name associated with Hyksos gods to be adopted by these Egyptians.

In the tomb of Tuthmosis III of the 18th Dynasty, who is often called the Napoleon of Egypt, and who was perhaps responsible for Egypt’s greatest expansion into the Levant, there is a scene where the king is accompanied by his mother and three queens, including Sit-Yah, the “daughter of the moon-god”. However, after this period, the traces of Yah’s moon cult in Egypt appear to be sporadic.

At this point, and because this is a scholarly work, we need to point out several important elements surrounding the name of this ancient Egyptian god, beginning with the fact that most Egyptologists throughout the history of that discipline have had difficulty agreeing on the translation of names from ancient text. Of course, this is not unique to Egyptologists, but is a problem throughout ancient studies.

Secondly, the references on Yah as an Egyptian moon god are slim. The best available documentation is that of George Hart, “A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses”, but few other scholarly references make mention of this specific Egyptian deity.

Now as an observation, the fact that this deity’s name appears so similar to the early form of the Hebrew God, may mean little if anything. A powerful god of one region was often taken by another, including the Egyptians, and almost completely redefined.

In any event, this god did not attain a very high regard within Egypt, and it is unlikely that he had any major effect on the religion of others in his Egyptian form. Rather, it was the Egyptians in this case who were influenced from without.

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Wiki Info

Iah is a god of the moon in ancient Egyptian religion, and his name, jˁḥ (sometimes transliterated as Yah, Jah, or Aah), simply means “moon”. Nevertheless, by the New Kingdom he was less prominent as a moon deity than the other gods with lunar connections, Thoth and Khonsu. Because of the functional connection between them, he could be identified with both of those deities; he was sometimes considered an adult form of Khonsu, and was increasingly absorbed by him. Iah continued to appear in amulets and occasional other representations, similar to Khonsu in appearance, with the same lunar symbols on his head and occasionally the same tight garments. He differed in wearing a full wig instead of a child’s sidelock, and sometimes an atef crown topped by another moon symbol.

Iah was also assimilated with Osiris, god of the dead, perhaps because, in its monthly cycle, the moon appears to renew itself. Iah also seems to have assumed the lunar aspect of Thoth, god of knowledge, writing and calculation; the segments of the moon were used as fractional symbols in writing.

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Mythological Family Members & Associated Deities

KHONSU

THOTH

OSIRIS

AMUN

RA

HORUS

AMENTET