The first transitional step towards the idol proper is given in some rude attempt to make the standing stone at the grave roughly resemble a human figure. In the later Sardinian examples, two conical lumps, representing the breasts, seem to mark that the figure is intended to be female--either because a woman is buried there, or to place the spot under the protection of a goddess. From this rude beginning we get every transitional form, like the Hermæ and the archaic Apollos, till we arrive at the perfect freedom and beauty of Hellenic sculpture. Says Grote, in speaking of Greek worship, “their primitive memorial erected to a god did not even pretend to be an image, but was often nothing more than a pillar, a board, a shapeless stone, or a post [notice the resemblance to ordinary grave-marks] receiving care and decoration from the {104}neighbourhood as well as worship.” Dr. Tylor, to whose great collection of instances I owe many acknowledgments, says in comment on this passage, “Such were the log that stood for Artemis in Euboea; the stake that represented Pallas Athene ‘sine effigie rudis palus, et informe lignum;’ the unwrought stone at Hyethos, which ‘after the ancient manner’ represented Heracles; the thirty such stones which the Pharæans in like fashion worshipped for the gods; and that one which received such honour in Boeotian festivals as representing the Thespian Eros.” Such also was the conical pillar of Asiatic type which stood instead of an image of the Paphian Aphrodite, and the conical stone worshipped in Attica under the name of Apollo. A sacred boulder lay in front of the temple of the Trœzenians, while another in Argos bore the significant name of Zeus Kappotas. “Among all the Greeks,” says Pausanias, “rude stones were worshipped before the images of the gods.” Among the Semites, in like manner, Melcarth was reverenced at Tyre under the form of two stone pillars. Intermediate forms, in which the stone takes successively a face, a head, arms, legs, a shapely and well-moulded body, are familiar to all of us in existing remains. The well-known figures of Priapus form a good transitional example. “At Tâbala, in Arabia,” says Professor Robertson Smith, “a sort of crown was sculptured on the stone of al-Lat to mark her head.” Indeed, to the last, the pillar or monolithic type is constantly suggested in the erect attitude and the proportions of the statue among all except the highest Hellenic examples. I may add, that even in Islam itself, which so sternly forbids images of any sort, some traces of such anthropomorphic gravestones may still be found. I noticed in the mosque of Mehemet Ali at Cairo that the headstones of the Vice-regal family were each adorned with a fez and tassel.