:: vague recollection of Byrne doing something stupid with the statue bit percolates into pre-coffe brain ::
…um…or were you thinking of something else?
As I remember, Byrne said hyppotalya(sp) created WW out of a statue or something similar.
That wasn’t Byrne, that was William Marston (?) Wonder Woman’s creator, back in All Star Comics #8, circa 1940.
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons wanted a daughter, but, being that there were no men on Paradise Island it was problematic. The Greek Gods told her to sculpt a baby out of clay: she did, and they breathed life into it/her.
You can blame Byrne for a lot of fuck ups with Wonder Woman’s origin, but not that (which is actually a really cool scene). It would be like blaming Byrne for having Krypton explode when he otherwise screwed up Superman. 
Erm…
typo:
“You can blame Byrne for a lot of fuck ups with Wonder Woman, but not her origin”