Benson, Margaret; Gourlay, Janet: The temple of Mut in Asher: an account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the history of Egypt and the main religious ideas of the Egyptians (London, 1899)

CHAP. V.] THREE PURPOSES IN WORK.

63

thousand years of ruin had left to it and in some
ways helped to bestow upon it.

The clearing of the temple was now for the most
part straightforward work, though slow, but there
was one hope we dimly cherished which might
involve a more radical search than anything" we had
yet been engaged in. One or two indications had
been noted that there might have existed on this
spot an earlier temple than that we were now
working at. These indications were the low wall
at the south-east corner bordering on trench A, and
the bit of granite bearing a i2th-dynasty name ; the
first week of our 1897 excavation was to give us
another bit of evidence to the same effect.

With regard to the second point—the discovery
of any other statuettes that might exist—the study
of results already obtained had made it possible to
form a hypothesis as to where such statues, if they
existed at all, would be found.

It was evident from the position of those already
discovered that they had been deliberately thrown
out of the temple—the smaller ones first broken and
then buried, the larger simply cast right outside the
temple area, or used, if they were worth it, as
material for a later wall.

We intended therefore to finish the clearance
of that trench in which we first found the statuettes;
to dig a corresponding trench on the west side of
the temple ; to search the banks of earth which
covered the outer brick wall, especially that above