The marble blocks were roughly hewn into shape with picks while still attached to the rock, and were then separated by the aid of metal wedges. Many objects discovered show that they were sometimes completed at the quarry, at other times the blocks were roughly brought to the sizes and forms required. The quarries appear to have been officially inspected. Texier found many architectural fragments and blocks at Dokimion bearing the signs of the inspectors of the block. Professor Ramsay writes: “The route from Dokimion to the coast is commercially almost the most important in Asia Minor. The road along which the enormous monolithic columns were transported passed through Synnada, where the central office for managing the quarries was situated.” [Illustration: FIG. 46.--Marble Slabs and Frieze in Narthex.] Ephesus and Alexandria were most important centres for the working and export of marble, of which such an enormous quantity was required by the Byzantine builders. The method of slicing up the blocks into veneer is described by an Eastern pilgrim, Nasiri Khusrau, in 1047. He says: “In the city of Ramlah there is marble in plenty ... they cut the marble here with a toothless saw which is worked with Mekkah sand.” This sand he tells us came from Haifa near Acre (Pal. Pilgrims’ Text Soc. Compare Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xxxvi.) § 3. APPLICATION OF MARBLE. At S. Sophia the application of the thin sheathing and incrustations (the “crustae” of Pliny) of the “delectable variety” of marbles is made in many ways. First there are the large sheets of the grayish Proconnesian, opened out side by side “so that the veining of one follows from the next.” Then the richer varieties are set in bands and panels with narrow notched fillets between them, and still more precious slabs are framed round with carved margins of white. Over the doors entering the aisles at the west there are panels with especially wide and rich borders of meanders growing from chalices. The large panels are very often of two pieces with matched veining. Fig. 46 shows one of a row of strongly veined panels from the narthex with the frieze above. All the wall plating is arranged with delightful variety as to size, and in the alternate placing of light against dark, so that there is no rigidity or over-accurate “setting out.”