Thebes, Egypt

For the Greek city of Boeotia, see Thebes, Greece. For other cities called Thebes, see Thebes.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis
Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List
Country	Egypt
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, iii, vi
Reference	87
UNESCO region	Arab States
Inscription history
Inscription	1979 (3rd Session)
Location of Thebes, Egypt in Egypt.

Thebes (pron.: /θiːbz/; Ancient Greek: Θῆβαι, Thēbai) is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt, natively known as Waset, located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.

Name

The Egyptian name of Thebes was Waset (wꜣs.t) "City of the Sceptre". The name Thebai is the Greek designation of opet, the Egyptian name of the Karnak temple complex situated across the Nile, west of Thebes proper. Classical Egyptian Ta-opet became Demotic ta-pe, which was adopted in Greek as thebai, assimilated to the name of the Greek city. Due to its association with the Egyptian city, Greek Thebes also had a statue and temple of Ammon (Amun) from the 5th century BC.

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 nōʼ ʼāmôn (Nahum 3:8), probably referring to the Egyptian deity Amun-Ra, most likely it is also the same as נא ("No") (Ezekiel 30:14-16, Jeremiah 46:25). In Greek this name was rendered Διόσπολις Diospolis, "City of Zeus", as Amun in the interpretatio graeca became Greek Zeus Ammon. The Greeks surnamed the city μεγάλη megale, "the Great", to differentiate it from numerous other cities called Diospolis. The Romans rendered the name Diospolis Magna.

wꜣs.t City of the Sceptre in hieroglyphs

wꜣs.t in hieroglyphs

niw.t rs.t Southern City in hieroglyphs

iwnw-sm’ Heliopolis of the South in hieroglyphs

History

Lithic core: Museum of Toulouse

Thebes was inhabited from around 3200 BC. It was the eponymous capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. Waset was the capital of Egypt during part of the 11th Dynasty (Middle Kingdom) and most of the 18th Dynasty (New Kingdom), when Hatshepsut built a Red Sea fleet to facilitate trade between Thebes Red Sea port of Elim, modern Quasir, and Elat at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. According to George Modelski, Thebes had about 40,000 inhabitants in 2000 BC (compared to 60,000 in Memphis, the largest city of the world at the time). By 1800 BC, the population of Memphis was down to about 30,000, making Thebes the largest city in Egypt at the time. By the Amarna period (14th century BC), Thebes may have grown to be the largest city in the world, with a population of about 80,000, a position which it held until about 1000 BC, when it was again surpassed by Memphis (among others).

With the 19th Dynasty the seat of government moved to the Delta. The archaeological remains of Thebes offer a striking testimony to Egyptian civilization at its height. The Greek poet Homer extolled the wealth of Thebes in the Iliad, Book 9 (c. 8th Century BC): "... in Egyptian Thebes the heaps of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes."

Luxor Temple

The Theban Necropolis

Archaeology

In 1979, the ruins of ancient Thebes were classified by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage site. The two great temples—Luxor Temple and Karnak—and the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens are among the great achievements of ancient Egypt.

See also

• Memphis, Egypt

References

• Gauthier, Henri. 1925–1931. Dictionnaire des noms géographiques contenus dans les textes hieroglyphiques. 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 0-385-42583-X (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 0-8014-3693-1 (hardcover)/ISBN 0-8014-8616-5 (paperback)

External links

• More information on ancient Thebes, a World Cultural Heritage site
• Theban Mapping Project
• Ramesseum/Ancient Thebes Digital Media Archive (photos, laser scans, panoramas), data from an Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities/CyArk research partnership
• ICOMOS Heritage at Risk 2001/2002

Preceded by Herakleopolis	Capital of Egypt 2060 BC - 1785 BC	Succeeded by Avaris
Preceded by Avaris	Capital of Egypt 1580 BC - c. 1353 BC	Succeeded by Akhetaten
Preceded by Akhetaten	Capital of Egypt c. 1332 BC - 1085 BC	Succeeded by Tanis