Statue of the Goddess Sekhmet-Mut

Sekhmet is depicted as a seated woman with the head of a lioness. She has a tripartite wig and a solar disk on her head. She is wearing a long close-fitting dress, a broad collar and bracelets on her arms and legs. Her left hand holds an ankh (“life”) symbol, an invariable attribute of deities.
The front surface of the throne carries two inscriptions: down the left leg – “The Son of Ra, his beloved, Amenhotep, Ruler of Thebes, beloved of Sekhmet, Lady of the limits of places, given life”; down the right leg – “Younger god, Lord of the Two Lands, Nebmaatra, beloved of Sekhmet, Lady of the limits of places, given life”.
Sekhmet – “the Powerful One” – was a furious manifestation of Hathor, the daughter of the Sun-God Ra, who once all but destroyed humanity for disobedience. The Sun, in essence a benevolent force, becomes terrible in the dry season, and consequently Sekhmet needed to be appeased with the aid of rituals.
As part of the preparations for the celebration of the 30th anniversary of his succession, Amenhotep had a huge complex constructed on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes for the cult of a large number of deities and of himself as their manifestation (this is the source of, among other things, Saint Petersburg sphinxes). One of its components was a temple that apparently contained 365 seated and 365 standing statues of Sekhmet and each day rituals were performed before two of them. When the complex fell into decay in the time of Ramesses II (probably due to an earthquake), some of the undamaged statues were removed to the east bank, to the temple of the goddess Mut, with whom Sekhmet began to be associated.
Andrey Bolshakov