The ‘god’s Wife of Amun’ was the highest-ranking priestess of that deity whose cult was centred in Thebes in Upper Egypt. It first appeared as an office in the Middle Kingdom. Its political potential reached its zenith in the Late Third Intermediate Period. Following the Persian invasion of Egypt in 525 BC, the title fell out of use. 

This granite sphinx of Shepenwepet II was discovered in 1904 in the Karnak Cache (CK 132). Shepenwepet II was the daughter of the Nubian King Piye. She served as ‘god’s Wife’ from the reign of King Taharqa (Dynasty 25) until after year nine of King Psametek I (Dynasty 26). The statue shows the forepart of a sphinx (rear part missing) with female head and human arms holding a ram-headed vessel decorated with a uraeus snake (partly broken). Shepenwepet II wears a hair wig that falls flat at the back and at the front, it divides into two large locks forming curled braids. Her name and titles are carved on the ram-headed vessel and on the statue base. Although the reading of the second cartouche of Shepenwepet is doubtful, an identical statue found at the sacred lake at Karnak (now in the Berlin Ägyptisches Museum) permits its attribution to Shepenwepet II.