The third chapter, "The Introduction of Vegetal Ornament and the Development of the Ornamental Tendril," traces an unbroken evolution of vegetal ornament from ancient Egyptian through to late Roman art. Here Riegl argues that motifs such as the lotus flower, although they may originally have been endowed by the Egyptians with symbolic significance, were adopted by other cultures that "no longer understood their hieratic meaning," and thereby became purely decorative. In the most famous section of this chapter, Riegl argued that acanthus ornament was not derived from the acanthus plant, as had been believed since the time of Vitruvius, but was rather a sculptural adaptation of the palmette motif. It was therefore "a product of pure artistic invention," and not of "a simple compulsion to make direct copies of living organisms."