Of these wells near the Pyramid, the most remarkable one by far is that called King Shafre's, being a square, masonried, sepulchral-looking shaft, -105 inches deep from the alabaster floor to the water-surface, and with a depth of water of 70 inches below that again,-in the eastern room of the recently-discovered and excavated building called King Shafre's Palace or Tomb, south-east of the Sphinx; and in which well, was found by Mariette Bey, the broken, life-sized statue of King Shafre 2, in diorite. Hence this well has really some claim to show, what the temperature of a water-well in the Great Pyramid would be. All the rest of the wells noted under this heading, were agricultural wells in the alluvial flat east of the Pyramid hills. With reference to the observations of April 23, the following note appears in the observing-book : April 23.-No wind; dull hazy evening: sun coloured of an unwholesome primrose yellow; locusts appearing from the south-west. The water to be examined was drawn always from the wells in a small tin kettle at the end of a rope; and only after said kettle had been kept plunging in and out for some minutes, and then depressed for as long, to near bottom of well. The temperature was taken both by fall and rise; that is, the air being warmer than the water, the thermometer was plunged into the fluid, and kept in until it ceased to fall; then being taken out, evaporation lowered the bulb below its previous lowest, in which state it was again plunged into the water, and rose up to, or very nearly to, what it had reached at first when descending from the warmer air. The reason of the different temperatures of the waters of the different wells in the alluvial plain, we could not discover at the time, or since: for their construction and situation seemed all so very similar; viz., circular holes eight to twelve feet broad, and fifteen to twenty deep, lined about their lower parts with Indian-corn stalks. The last four northward wells were being worked by the villagers with the shadoof: the first five, were not being worked in any way. In some of the extreme cases of anomalous temperatures, the kettleful of water experimented on was emptied upon the ground, and a new haul taken,-but in no case was the numerical result of the first experiment thereby sensibly altered, for that well. |