THEBES

THEBES, ancient city in Upper egypt . A provincial backwater during the Old Kingdom, the small town of Wase rose to national prominence as the city of the 11th-Dynasty kings who founded the Middle Kingdom (c. 2134–1786 B.C.E.). The cult of the god Amun (biblical, amon ) took root and flourished there after its introduction by succeeding kings of the 12th Dynasty, although they transferred their own residence to the north. At the outset of the 18th Dynasty (c. 1575) and, simultaneously, of the Egyptian Empire, the city became an international metropolis and Amun became the most important deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Amun granted victory to the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, and in gratitude they built splendid temples to him. When the Greeks first visited the city, its numerous temples and palaces so reminded them of their own storied "Thebes of the Hundred Gates" that they bestowed that name on the Egyptian city. To the Egyptians, however, from the New Kingdom on, Thebes was called either Wase, or more frequently simply "the City" (niwe) or "the City of Amun" (niwe Amun) whence the biblical No (Jer. 46:25 and Ezek. 30:14–16) and No-Amon (Nah. 3:8). The brutal sacking of this city by the Assyrians in 663 B.C.E. made such an impression that 50 years later, likening the forthcoming fate of Nineveh to it, the prophet Nahum (3:810) declared "Are you better than No-Amon that was situated among the rivers, that had the waters around her?… Cush and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite;… Yet was she carried away." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A.H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, 2 (1947), 24ff.; C.F. Nims, Thebes of the Pharaohs (1965). (Alan Richard Schulman)