The massive lintel of the door is 29 feet 6
inches long, 16 feet 6 inches deep, and 3 feet 4 inches high, with
a weight of about 120 tons--a mass of stone fairly comparable with
some of the gigantic blocks in which Egyptian architects delighted.
It is, for instance, about ten tons heavier than the quartzite block
which forms the sepulchral chamber in the pyramid of Amenemhat III.
at Hawara. The great chamber of the tomb consists of an impressive
circular vault 48 feet in diameter and in height. Its construction
is not that of true vaulting; but each of the thirty-three courses
projects a little beyond the one below it, until at last they approach
closely at the apex, which is closed by a single slab. The courses,
after being laid, were hewn to a perfectly smooth curve, and carefully
polished, and it appears that the whole of the dome was decorated
with rosettes of bronze, a scheme of adornment which recalls the
bronze walls of the Palace of Alcinous. From the great chamber a
side door, bearing traces of rich decoration, leads to a square
room, 27 feet square by 19 feet high, which may possibly have been
the actual place of interment. Curtius found 'this lofty and solemn
vault' the most imposing of all the monuments of ancient Greece.
In the same hillside as the Treasury of Atreus, but some 400 yards
north of it, stands the tomb known as the 'Tomb of Klytemnestra,' or
'Mrs.
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