The occasion appears to have been celebrated as a festival by all Egypt, and the remembrance of it lasted long after the event:  the somewhat detailed account of the ceremonies which then took place was copied out again at Thebes, towards the end of the XVIIIth dynasty.  It describes the king mounting his throne at the meeting of his council, and receiving, as was customary, the eulogies of his “sole friends” and of the courtiers who surrounded him:  “Here,” says he, addressing them, “has my Majesty ordained the works which shall recall my worthy and noble acts to posterity.  I raise a monument, I establish lasting decrees in favour of Harmakhis, for he has brought me into the world to do as he did, to accomplish that which he decreed should be done; he has appointed me to guide this earth, he has known it, he has called it together and he has granted me his help; I have caused the Eye which is in him to become serene, in all things acting as he would have me to do, and I have sought out that which he had resolved should be known.  I am a king by birth, a suzerain not of my own making; I have governed from childhood, petitions have been presented to me when I was in the egg, I have ruled over the ways of Anubis, and he raised me up to be master of the two halves of the world, from the time when I was a nursling; I had not yet escaped from the swaddling-bands when he enthroned me as master of men; creating me himself in the sight of mortals, he made me to find favour with the Dweller in the Palace, when I was a youth....  I came forth as Horus the eloquent, and I have instituted divine oblations; I accomplish the works in the palace of my father Atumu, I supply his altar on earth with offerings, I lay the foundations of my palace in his neighbourhood, in order that the memorial of my goodness may remain in his dwelling; for this palace is my name, this lake is my monument, all that is famous or useful that I have made for the gods is eternity.”  The great lords testified their approbation of the king’s piety; the latter summoned his chancellor and commanded him to draw up the deeds of gift and all the documents necessary for the carrying out of his wishes.  “He arose, adorned with the royal circlet and with the double feather, followed by all his nobles; the chief lector of the divine book stretched the cord and fixed the stake in the ground."*

* Stehn, Urkunde uber den Bau des Sonnentempels zu On, pl. i. 11. 13—­15.  The priest here performed with the king the more important of the ceremonies necessary in measuring the area of the temple, by “inserting the measuring stakes,” and marking out the four sides of the building with the cord.

This temple has ceased to exist; but one of the granite obelisks raised by Usirtasen I. on each side of the principal gateway is still standing.  The whole of Heliopolis has disappeared:  the site where it formerly stood is now marked only by a few almost imperceptible inequalities in the soil, some crumbling lengths of walls, and here and there some scattered blocks of limestone, containing a few lines of mutilated inscriptions which can with difficulty be deciphered; the obelisk has survived even the destruction of the ruins, and to all who understand its language it still speaks of the Pharaoh who erected it.