Note 228.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

The iconic impulse whereby the tree-trunk and pillar were gradually supplanted by the fully human statue was beginning to work by the time that the Homeric poems received their present form; for we have in the Iliad228.1 an undoubted reference to a seated statue of Athena in her temple on the Akropolis of Troy. We see here the working of an instinct that was partly religious, partly, perhaps, aesthetic in its origin. If we are to connect it with foreign influences, Egypt is at least a more “proximate cause” than Babylon.