Another part of the ceremony consisted in the king proceeding to the site where the temple was to be built, accompanied mythically by the goddess Sesheta, who is styled "the mistress of the laying of the foundation-stone." Each was armed with a stake. The two stakes were connected by a cord. Next the cord was aligned towards the sun or star, as the case might be; when the alignment was perfect the two stakes were driven into the ground by means of a wooden mallet; there was no difference of procedure in the case of temples directed to the sun. One boundary wall parallel to the main axis of the temple was built along the line marked out by this stretched cord. If the moment of sun--or star-rise or--set were chosen, as we have every reason to believe was the case seeing that all the early observations were made on the horizon, it is obvious that the light from the body towards which the temple was aligned would penetrate the axis of the temple thus built from one end to the other in the original direction of the cord. [Illustration: THE LAYING OF THE FOUNDATION-STONE CEREMONIAL.] We learn from Chabas that the Egyptian word which expresses the idea of founding or laying the foundation-stone of a temple is _Senti_--a word which still exists in Coptic. But in the old language another word, _Put-ser_, which no longer remains in Coptic, has been traced. It has been established that _put_ means "to stretch," and _ser_ means "cord;" so that that part of the ceremonial which consisted in stretching a cord in the direction of a star was considered of so great an importance that it gave its name to the whole ceremonial. I will next refer to some of the inscriptions; one, dating from the last half of the third thousand B.C., occurs in the document describing the building of the temple of Annu (Heliopolis). We read:--"Arose the king, attired in his necklace and the feather crown; all the world followed him, and the majesty of Amenemhāt [first king of the Twelfth dynasty]. The Kher-heb read the sacred text during the stretching of the measuring-cord and the laying of the foundation-stone on the piece of ground selected for this temple. Then withdrew His Majesty Amenemhāt; and King Usertsen [son and co-regent] wrote it down before the people." Nissen, from whom (_loc. cit._) I quote the above, adds:--"On account of the stretching of the measuring-cord, the Egyptian engineers were called by the Greeks ἁρπεδονάπται whose art Democritus boasts of having acquired."