In early Spring 1985, whilst Richard A. Fazzini, Chairman of the Department of Classical and Egyptian Art, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, and director of Brooklyn's excavations in Egypt, was working in the Temple of Mut hypostyle hall, he came across the lower part of a god, parts of the plumes from a headdress of Amun, the feet of a second figure, and the face of the goddess Mut wearing a vulture headdress. The location was some sixty or seventy feet from the north-east corner of the Colonnaded Hall where in 1895-1897 two English ladies, Miss Margaret Benson and Miss Janet Gourlay, were 'excavating' and had discovered in 1896 the diorite head of a deity, which they attributed to Amun or Min-amun, and the vulture headdress associated with the goddess Mut. When Miss Margaret Benson, a semi-invalided daughter of a clergyman later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, went to Egypt and applied for a concession to excavate, she was given a site where no finds were expected. However, she unearthed more than two hundred statues, and was rewarded by the Egyptian Antiquities' Service with a gift of a few statues in recognition of her efforts and invaluable contribution to art history, especially of the XXVth and early XXVIth dynasties. This exciting discovery by Mr Fazzini confirmed that 'Miss Benson's head' is almost certainly the other part of the cult statue of the god Amun and his consort Mut which had stood in the Temple of Mut, a large temple complex lying south of the temenos of the great Temple of Amun and approached by an avenue of crio-sphinxes. Mut was the consort of Amun and mother of the moon god Khonsu, who were worshipped as the principal triad at Thebes. It has been suggested that the face of the goddess Mut resembles the features of the Divine Adoratrix of Amun, Shepenupet II, who in turn bore the features of her brother, the reigning king Taharqa. Under Taharqa there was a religious revival of the worship of Amun and a cultural and artistic renaissance, when sculpture from the earlier 'high' periods was emulated. This head, registering the incised outline of the lower lip (the vermilion line) characteristic of important sculpture from the royal workshop, reflects possibly an early XVIIIth Dynasty model, perhaps even an extant sculpture still standing in the Temple of Amun.

Although the God Amun was worshipped in his temple at Karnak for over two thousand years, nevertheless, divine sculpture of the XXVth Dynasty is extremely rare: only two statues in stone of the god Amun are known, a statuette in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the present one, the largest found to date.

With the scientific excavations undertaken by The Brooklyn Museum, ninety years after the two English ladies were the first women to be given a legal concession to dig in Egypt, there can be seen the fruit of both endeavours in recovering the lost cult statue of Amun and Mut.

For further reading on the sculpture of the XXVth Dynasty, c.f., Ludwig Borchardt, Statuen und Statuetten von Königen und Privatleuten im Museum von Kairo, Teil 1, Berlin, 1914, Teil 2, Berlin, 1925; Catalogue général des Antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire and Bernard V. Bothmer et alia, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period 700 B.C. to A.D. 100 Exhibition, The Brooklyn Museum, 1960, reprinted with addenda, Arno Press, 1969
For history, see K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100-650 B.C.), Warminster, 1973