Excavations
The area was visited and surveyed by Napoleon's expedition in 1799–1801, and then by The Royal Prussian Expedition of 1842–1845, which was led by Karl Richard Lepsius. Recording continued under Auguste Mariette and Gaston Maspero, but it was Margaret Benson and Janet Gourlay who undertook the first major excavations in 1895 through 1897. The area was not excavated again until the 1920s by Maurice Pillet. Since 1976, when the Egyptian government granted the Brooklyn Museum exploration rights to the entire site, it has been in a state of ongoing excavation and restoration, and presumably it will be a while before that changes. The Detroit Institute of Arts also is associated with this excavation, together with a Johns Hopkins University team, under Betsy Bryan who has uncovered many details about a building projects of the pharaoh, Hatsheput that included adding the porch for use in the Festival of Drunkenness that celebrated a change of the goddess Sekhmet (an aspect of Mut) from a fierce warrior lioness needed during a long period of war, to a more peaceful figure.
Two Grade I listed statues at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England, collected by the 6th Duke of Devonshire, dating from c.1570–1304 BC and said to represent Sekhmet, are believed to have come from this site.
Read more about this topic: Precinct Of Mut