“Consider the eye-idols on black and white alabaster, thin cracker-like bodies surmounted by eyes once tinted with malachite paint, which have been found in the thousands, particularly at Brak on one of the upper braches of the Euphrates, that date about 3000 B.C. . . . [T]hey are suitable to be held in the hand. Most have one pair of eyes, but some have two; some wear crowns and some have markings clearly indicating gods. Larger eye-idols made of terra cotta have been found at other sites, Ur, Mari, and Lagash; and, because the eyes are open loops, have been called spectacle-idols.”

—Julian Jaynes, from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976.