The original entrance of the enclosure was placed
in the southern left wall.
When in about 150 AD the enclosure of tomb 86 was built, the old
entrance of tomb 85
was closed and a new one appeared in the wall facing the Via Severiana.
The enclosure, first used as a meetingplace, had benches alongside
the full lenght of the side-walls. This is by the way one of the
rare
examples of funeral banquets inside a tomb (see also tomb 54).
In later time the enclosure was re-organized. First as a columbarium
and soon, on and beneath the floor, for inhumation.
Probably in the third century AD the walls of the enclosure were
rebuilt
with a rough kind of brick. The second entrance was closed too and
again a new one was built in the same wall but now somewhat higher.
Probably tomb 85 was reachable by a wooden staircase which is now
missing.
(click to continue tomb 85a)
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