SYDNEY (REUTERS) - Australian and Egyptian scholars on Tuesday performed archaeological transplant surgery to put a new head on the old shoulders of a broken ancient statue. The torso and replica head of the statue of a goddess, dating back to about 1300 B.C. during the reign of King Tutankhamun, were ceremonially joined in a Sydney University gallery. It is really a masterpiece, especially when it is attached together, said Dr Mohamed Saleh, director-general of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Archaeologists were unable to transplant the original head as Egyptian law prevents Tutankhamun artefacts from being taken out of the country. The statue‘s history is shrouded in mystery. The original pieces have lain in separate museums on either side of the world for over a century, but curators were long unaware the pieces matched. The beautifully-carved statue in lustrous black volcanic rock at Sydney University is believed to depict either Isis or Hathor, both important Egyptian goddesses. Its head lies in the Cairo museum, where it has rested since late last century after being found in the Temple of Karnak in modern Luxor. The ceremonial rejoining became possible after American academic Ray Johnson, an expert in statuary of the period, recognised the two pieces in photographs about two years ago. Johnson, director of the University of Chicago Epigraphic Survey in Egypt, wrote to the two museums and suggested they measure their respective pieces for a possible fit. The torso was taken to Australia in the late 1850s and donated to the university in 1860 by Charles Nicholson, a respected scholar and collector after whom Sydney University named its archaeology museum. Sydney University does not know where Nicholson bought the torso because his papers were destroyed in a fire early this century. The Nicholson Museum will keep the cast of the head atop its original torso, while Saleh was presented with a cast of the body to match with the original head back in Cairo.