Here is a depiction of Seshat working alongside Horus, now in his adult form. They are featured together in this, and other temple reliefs, as key participants in the stretching of the cord along with the pharaoh.
This ritual was called a Pedjeshes ceremony. Pedj means "to stretch," and Shes means " a cord." While Seshat is depicted as present for this ceremony in all cases, it is said that a priest, priestess, or the pharaoh's wife might have represented her in human form in the ceremony.
In The Sacred Magic of Ancient Egypt, independent scholar and author Rosemary Clark offers an in-depth description of how this ceremony was carried out in ancient times. She said it was conducted at night - beneath the star. It was a systematic approach in which the outlining of the parameter of the temple to be built was sectioned off in four quarters of the designated land.
"The first quarter is the east, the place of sunrise and beginnings," Clark writes. "The next quarter is south, where all celestial bodies appear to culminate in the sky and emanate their power. Following that is the Western quarter, where the sun retires. The circuit is accomplished at the north, where darkness prevails. ... Ritualists are familiar with this clockwise order which represents the fundamental movement of life from the design of pedals on flowers to the expanding Milky Way galaxy," she writes.
Clark offers a deeply fascinating and vivid explanation of how this sacred space was formed and the tools and humans involved:
- "The quarter should be discerned using an accurate compass and marked prior to the foundation ceremony."
- "The night ritual called for two divine representatives – the Royal person and the priestess representing Seshat, the measurer."
- "A cord with an astronomical point already sited by the attendant priests was aligned with the royal person gazing up at the sky through the headdress of the priestess and marking the axis of the temple by stretching the cord from that point."
- "The corners of the temple were thus established and a mallet held by the monarch tapped the stakes of precious metal into the ground."