Thebes, Egypt

For the ancient capital of Boeotia, see Thebes, Greece.

Thebes (, Thēbai) is the Greek designation of the ancient Egyptian niwt "(The) City" and niwt-rst "(The) Southern City". It is located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile (). Thebes was the capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome (the term "Waset" was used for the name of the city as well). The city was the capital of Egypt during part of the Eleventh Dynasty (Middle Kingdom), and most of the Eighteenth Dynasty (New Kingdom), though the administration probably remained located at Memphis for much of this. With the Nineteenth Dynasty the seat of government moved to the Delta. The archaeological remains of Thebes offer a striking testimony to Egyptian civilization at its height.

In modern usage, the mortuary temples and tombs on the west bank of the river Nile are generally thought of as being part of Thebes.

As the seat of the Theban triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, Thebes was known in the Egyptian language from the end of the New Kingdom as niwt-imn, "The City of Amun." This found its way into the Hebrew Bible as נא אמון nōˀ ˀāmôn (Nahum 3:8), which is probably the same as נא ("No") (Ezekiel 30:14). In Greek this name was rendered Diospolis, "City of Zeus" (Zeus being the god whom the Greeks identified with Amun). The Greeks surnamed the city megale, "the Great", to differentiate the city from numerous others named Diospolis. The Romans rendered the name Diospolis Magna.

The Greek poet Homer extolled the wealth of Thebes in the Iliad, Book 9 (c. 7th Century BCE): "... in Egyptian Thebes the heaps of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes."

Luxor and Karnak are the modern-day Arabic names of the towns situated at or near the sites of two important temples that stood on the outskirts of the city.

The name Thebes is often mistakenly thought to derive from the name of the Greek town called Thebes. Although the etymology is unclear, Thebes is likely a grecization of ancient Egyptian t3 ipt-swt (lit. "The Most-Select of Places"), one of the names of the temple of Karnak, which is located in the city.

Major archaeological sites in Thebes

East Bank

West Bank

Valley of the Kings
Valley of the Queens
Medinet Habu (mortuary temple of Ramesses III)
The Ramesseum (mortuary temple of Ramesses II)
Deir al-Madinah (workers' village)
Tombs of the Nobles
Deir el-Bahri (temples of Montuhotep II, Hatshepsut, etc.)
Malkata (palace of Amenhotep III)
Colossi of Memnon (mortuary temple of Amenhotep III)

Notes

Sources

Gauthier, Henri. 1925–1931. Dictionnaire des noms géographiques contenus dans les textes hiéroglyphiques. Vol. 3 of 7 vols. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire. (Reprinted Osnabrück: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1975). 75, 76.
Polz, Daniel C. 2001. "Thebes". In The Oxford Encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, edited by Donald Bruce Redford. Vol. 3 of 3 vols. Oxford, New York, and Cairo: Oxford University Press and The American University in Cairo Press. 384–388.
Redford, Donald Bruce. 1992. "Thebes". In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman. Vol. 6 of 6 vols. New York: Doubleday. 442–443. ISBN 038542583X (6-volume set)
Strudwick, Nigel C., & Strudwick, Helen, Thebes in Egypt: A Guide to the Tombs and Temples of Ancient Luxor. London: British Museum Press, 1999, ISBN 0801436931 (hardcover)/ISBN 0801486165 (paperback)

External links

Theban Mapping Project