One who wishes to separate some ash from the Altar, arises early and immerses before the appointed [Kohen] arrives. Now, at what time did the appointed [Kohen] arrive? Not all the [arrival] times were the same; at times he would arrive at the rooster’s cry, or close to it, [either] before it or after it. The appointed one would arrive and knock upon [the Temple gates], and they would open for him. He said to them: “Whoever has immersed should come and participate in the lottery.” They held a lottery; whoever won, won.

He took the key and opened the minor door, and entered from the Hall of the Fire into the Courtyard. [The Kohanim] entered behind him with two torches of fire in their hands, and they would split into two groups: These walked in the colonnade toward the east, and these walked in the colonnade toward the west. They would check as they walked until they reached the place of preparation of the chavitin. [The two groups] met one another; they would say: “It is well; all is well.” They appointed “makers of chavitin” to make the chavitin.

The one chosen to remove ash from the Altar would [go to] remove the ash, and they would say to him: “Be careful not to touch the utensil until you sanctify your hands and feet from the Laver; and behold, the shovel is placed in the corner, between the ramp and the Altar, west of the ramp.”  No person entered with him, and [there was] no lamp in his hand. Rather, he walked by the light of the pyre. [The Kohanim] neither saw him nor heard the sound of his [footsteps], until they heard the sound of the wood that Ben Katin fashioned into a wheel for the Laver, and they would say: “The time has come!”  He sanctified his hands and feet from the Laver; he took the silver shovel and ascended to the top of the Altar, and he cleared the coals to this side and to that side, and then scooped from the innermost consumed [coals], and he descended. [When] he reached the floor, he would turn his face to the north; he walked to the east of the ramp about ten amos. He piled the coals upon the floor at a distance of three handbreadths from the ramp, the place where they would deposit the crop of the bird [olah] and the ashes of the Inner Altar and [of] the Menorah.

His fellows saw him descend and they came running and hastily sanctified their hands and their feet from [the water of] the Laver. They took the shovels and the forks and ascended to the top of the Altar. The limbs and the fats that were not consumed during the night, [the Kohanim] remove them onto the sides of the Altar. If the sides do not hold [these sacrificial parts], [they] arrange them opposite the ledge, on the ramp.