Phoenician sculpture, even at its best, is somewhat rude.  The country possesses no marble, and has not even any stone of a fine grain.  The cretaceous limestone, which is the principal geological formation, is for the most part so pierced with small holes and so thickly sown with fossil shells as to be quite unsuited for the chisel; and even the better blocks, which the native sculptors were careful to choose, are not free from these defects, and in no case offer a grain that is satisfactory.  To meet these difficulties, the Phoenician sculptor occasionally imported his blocks either from Egypt or from the volcanic regions of Taurus and Amanus;[71] but it was not until he had transported himself to Cyprus, and found there an abundance of a soft, but fairly smooth, compact, and homogeneous limestone, that he worked freely, and produced either statues or bas-reliefs in any considerable number.[72] The Cyprian limestone is very easy to work.  “It is a whitish stone when it comes out of the quarry, but by continued exposure to the air the tone becomes a greyish yellow, which, though a little dull, is not disagreeable to the eye.  The nail can make an impression on it, and it is worked by the chisel much more easily and more rapidly than marble.  But it is in the plastic arts as in literature and poetry—­what costs but little trouble has small chance of enduring.  The Cyprian limestone is too soft to furnish the effects and the contrasts which marble offers, so to speak, spontaneously; it is incapable of receiving the charming polish which makes so strong an opposition to the dark shadows of the parts where the chisel has scooped deep.  The chisel, whatever efforts it may make and however laboriously it may be applied, cannot impress on such material the strong and bold touches which indicate the osseous structure, and make the muscles and the veins show themselves under the epidermis in Greek statuary.  The sculptor’s work is apt to be at once finikin and lax; it wants breadth, and it wants decision.  Moreover, the material, having little power of resistance, retains but ill what the chisel once impressed; the more delicate markings and the more lifelike touches that it once received, it loses easily through friction or exposure to rough weather.  A certain number of the sculptured figures found by M. Di Cesnola at Athienau were discovered under conditions that were quite peculiar, having passed from the shelter of a covered chamber to that of a protecting bed of dust, which had hardened and adhered to their surfaces; and these figures had preserved an unusual freshness, and seem as if just chiselled; but, saving these exceptions, the Cypriot figures have their angles rounded, and their projections softened down.  It is like a page of writing, where the ink, before it had time to dry, preserving its sharpness of tone, has been absorbed by the blotting paper and has left only pale and feeble traces."[73]