atomrab
commented
7 years ago We're close on this, but there are still two issues. The first is that the stone support for the post that probably held up the outside of the stairs is set right against the stone foundation for those wooden stairs, not at the far site of the pithos pit. See the detailed picture below -- the N wall of the room is at the top. I think the circular depression in that stone that sticks into the pithos pit is actually meant to hold the post for the stairs. If it doesn't make sense for it to go straight up, then maybe it ran out at an angle, like the post for the balcony over room 32.
The other issue is that the stone foundation of the stairs along the N wall is actually a little thicker than it appears in the model -- it's more like 35-40 cm thick. I have been assuming that it carried most of the width of the stair risers, which would have been in wood. Take a look at the overhead shot below, which shows the whole room. I think that the stone steps are fine, but the foundation along the N wall looks wider to me in this picture.
The blocking of that door was accompanied by changes to the interior of the room. An additional wall was built against the existing wall on that side of the room, probably as a reinforcement for the initial wall, which had begin to sag. Against that wall, near the pit, a new internal staircase was built. The first steps were stone, up to the corner; after the staircase turned the corner, there was a partial stone reinforcement against the wall, but the risers were probably made of wood. There was a stone support in the middle of the northeast side of the pit, which I think was used to support a wooden post that held up the wooden section of the stairs. These would have reached the second floor through an opening in the floor.
I don't know if you remember this arrangement from the long-deceased Second Life model, but I'm also putting in a screen-grab from that, since this was also a little tough to draw using PPT shapes.