The stairway is protected from the elements by an enclosure under the extended 44 x 8ft roof of the outdoor sleeping porch.
The summit of the superstructure consisted of alternating layers of construction material and several plaster floors with associated stairway treads.
We exposed 32 m 2 of the stairway, including three of its steps, but found no sculpted risers.
While it does not have stairways aligned to the cardinal directions, it does have design elements that do align in this way.
Some are intended for exploration of only natural terrains, but others also for artificial environments, including stairways.
The other leg of the gallery returns past the stairways to a bathroom on the left.
This construction alone might make the structure resistant to shear, but the stairways provide diagonal bracing to create a completely rigid frame.
Unlike its predecessor, however, this second tomb was equipped with a stairway that provided access to the burial chamber from inside the building above.
