There is another possible source of difficulty to be noticed. The inscription mentions four doors, 8-1/4 x 2-1/2 feet, for which there is no place in the outside walls. These then must have been placed in the interior walls. According to the present plan which shows a closed wall between the shrines of Athena and Erechtheus these two double-doors must have been in the western cross-wall where they could hardly have admitted to a single room (Fowler and Wheeler, _Greek Archaeology_, p. 148, fig. 115). This obliges us to suppose a division of the middle chamber into two parts and thereby presents a difficulty to those who believe that the word διπλοῦν in the description of Pausanias refers to the entire western part of the Erechtheum. For the western cella would then consist of three instead of two chambers.
Further difficulties of a serious nature are encountered when one attempts to fit the text of Pausanias to the present plan of the whole building (cf. Michaelis, _Jb. Arch. Inst._, 1902, p. 16 ff). This is what scholars have sought to do with very different and unsatisfactory results, so unsatisfactory that of late there is a tendency on the part of some to deny that any value is to be placed upon the sequence which Pausanias observes in his narrative. Those who believe that the description is something more than a loose statement of the contents of the temple are said to be making assumptions. But the description, taken by itself, seems to be a systematic account, and the burden of proof rests upon those who deny it. The denial is based upon the failure of the account to square with the accepted plan of the interior of the Erechtheum, but such basis is insecure because the interior of the temple has been so completely destroyed as not to permit an absolutely certain restoration by means of the evidence of the building alone. There is no sure warrant for saying in the case of this description that Pausanias has confused his notes.
The traveler has been made to enter the Erechtheum through three different doors. His account, however, is simple and ought not to occasion difficulty. It suggests orderly progression. Before the entrance he found the altar of Zeus; on entering, three altars and the paintings of the Butadae; then in an inner (ἔνδον) room the well and trident-mark; thereafter follows the account of the objects in the cella of Athena. Then he passed to the Pandroseum. The order in this description is simple and natural, and the moment the theory is advanced of a postponement of certain objects for mention later in other connections, that moment the description ceases to be of value so far as the interior arrangement of the Erechtheum is concerned and the way is opened up to the disposition of the contents of the temple in accord with individual choice. The simplicity and naturalness of the description is the best guarantee of an orderly progression by Pausanias, and the only guide where the evidence of the building is insufficient.