ABSTRACT
For the ancients, the gods were embodied in statues and were living, acting beings with lives of their own; in this sense, their interactions with mortals were theophanies of the direct-visitation type. 1 Like towns and temples, idols, statues, and figurines were tools of the gods or, to be more precise, instruments of social control. In this chapter, I investigate the function of idols; objects that were crucial to the operation of bicameral neuroculture.
