The Mishnah on the Altar Fire

I was reading Mishnah Tamid, studying up on the daily sacrifices in the Temple, and I was happy to see some discussion of the Altar Fire. While I mention this tractate once in my book, it provides some great details when read at greater length. It is describing temple ritual procedures that would have been current in the last iteration of the Second Temple right before the Romans destroyed it as remembered in Jewish oral tradition. First, it describes priestly procedures for clearing out the ashes from the Altar: He [a priest] whose lot it was to clear the Altar of ashes went to clear the Altar of ashes, while they said to him, ‘Take heed that thou touch not the vessel before thou hast sanctified thy hands and feet in the laver; and lo, the firepan lies in the corner between the Ramp and the Altar, on the western side of the Ramp’. None went in with him and he carried no lamp, but he walked in the light of the Altar fire. They neither saw him nor heard the sound of him until they heard the noise of the wooden device which Ben Katins had made for the laver; and then they said, ‘The time is come!’ He sanctified his hands and feet at the laver, took the silver firepan and went up to t...