Gell, William: The itinerary of Greece: With a commentary on Pausanias and Strabo and an account of the monuments of antiquity at present existing in that country (London, 1810)

146 DESCRIPTION OF PLATES, &c.

The entrance is at the least half buried, when observed from this
point of view, but within much more may be seen. This is perhaps
the only gateway erected in very early times, where the antepagments
do not consist of separate and appropriate stones, but are merely the
common blocks of the wall cut into three receding faces.

The earth on the sides of the passage to the door conceals some of
the wall to the right and left. In the fore-ground is seen the capital
of a column, or rather semicircular pilaster. This is of coarse
green marble, as is the pilaster itself, which now lies half buried in
the entrance. It is covered with zig-zag and spiral ornaments, exactly
like the capital which is seen more fully detailed in the miscellaneous
plate. It is a very curious fact that the temples of Egypt seem like
the treasury to have been without doors. In the upper part of the
jambs, however in some of the portals, holes intended to receive some
sort of cylindrical bar may be observed, and lower down other holes
by -which a door, if it was made to oscillate from the upper bar as a
fulcrum, might be occasionally fastened. Hamilton's Egyptiaca,
page 90. It is rather to be supposed that the bar at the top supported
a veil, and that other bars were placed across the curtain to prevent
the wind from rendering it wseless, a practice still common in the
East.

PLATE VI.

Plate 6, represents the interior of the treasury of Atreus. At the
entrance, a figure is seen standing upon the pilaster of green marble