Talk:Thebes, Egypt

link

I didn't see a link to Pharoah on either the Memphis page or this Thebes page. Would it be sensible for one or both of them to so link ?

Afrocentric bias not needed

The complete body of the text on Thebes has been replaced for the second time with an article that is rife with Afrocentric bias. Moreover, it is, quite frankly, poorly written, and it is not properly formatted for use with Wiki. To the anonymous individual at 24.209.250.134 who is posts this material, please read Wikipedia:Neutral point of view article and the relevent pages on formatting.

I am therefore changing the article back to what it was before the Afrocentric version was inserted. I would, however, like to invite 24.209.250.134 to contribute all s/he wants, but ask that a NPOV be maintained. We can then avoid an edit war. --Nefertum17 08:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Which bias would you prefer? Rktect 10:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Theba of Egypt and Theba of Boeotia

Why Greeks named the city "Niwt-rst" or "Waset", capital of Southern Kingdom, as "Thebae", which is the name of Boeotian city?

What was the relation between two Thebas?

--IonnKorr 20:40, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

'The name Thebes is often mistakenly thought to derive from the name of the Greek town called'

Um -- if it's 'mistakenly', well then a number of hugely respected Egyptologists (both alive and dead) are mistaken. Barry Kemp explicitly discusses the Greek Thebes/Egypt Thebes relationship.--Pwaryuex 04:44, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

It was a "mistake" by the ancient Greeks, I suppose is meant here. But wasn´t it Herodotus who wrote about Thebes with one hundred gates, I hardly recall this from the Illiad by Homer? --JFK 12:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Population figures

It is difficult and sometimes even impossible to rank the world´s top five largest cities in ancient times. The Chandler list [1] is based on some very general assumptions. --JFK 12:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I changed the 1980 to 1780, which I believe to be a typo.

It is believed that Thebes was the largest city in the world from 1780 BC to 1770 BC and from 1400 to 668 BC.

Removed until verified. --JFK 11:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

References

Antiquity of Thebes

Ancient Egyptian Waset was called Thebes by the Greeks, T3 ipet was the Luxor temple. Djeme (Medinet Habu) sounded similar to that of the Greeks Boetian city. Local rulers were expansionist in the first and second intermediate periods when the Mycenean Greek emporia in the delta were beginning to do to Egypt what Western inroads in Shanghai did to China in the 18th century. Monuments earlier than the old kingdom are scarce and Thebes appears to be closely linked to the rise of the mummification industry at Karnak in the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt and the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt Red Sea trade which supplied it with GoldBitumen, Naptha, Natron, Frankincense, Myrrh, and carved stone amulets. In the Seventeenth dynasty of Egypt the carving of tombs into the rock of the Valley of Kings increased Thebes stature and allows the kings of Thebes to drive the Hyksos out. In the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt the attention shifts to the wars against Kadesh and Syria. The disruption of the Amarna letters with the Habiru bandits moving northwest from Elat into Canaan, and the raids and piracy of the Sea People as described by Wen Amon forcing stronger border defenses. In the Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt Rameses Meri Amun named the horses of his war chariot "Victory of Thebes" but a good deal of his time was spent campaigning in the north and the affairs of Thebes are left to the temple administrators of Amun. During the third intermediate period Thebes formed a counterbalance to the influence of the 21st and 22nd Dynasty Libyan kings who ruled from Tanis in the delta. As the original Montu, the bull of Thebes developed into a a triad dedicated to Amon, Mut and Khons, Thebes (T3-ipet), plus Luxor (Ipet-resyt), and Karnak (Ipet-isut) formed a temple complex that with Deir-el bahr stretched an itrw or river journey, 1/10 of a geographical degree along the Nile.

Rktect 11:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

References

Name in hieroglyphs

Can't believe the city's name is included in several languages but not in the original :) There are several versions for it, I don't know if it's possible to put these hiero boxes next to each other so that they'll look nice?

w3s.t in hieroglyphs

w3s.t in hieroglyphs

niw.t rs.t in hieroglyphs

iwnw-sm’ in hieroglyphs

w3s.t in hieroglyphs

w3s.t in hieroglyphs

niw.t rs.t in hieroglyphs

iwnw-sm’ in hieroglyphs

"Waset" means "City of the Sceptre", "niwt-rs.t" is "Southern City" and "iunu-shema" is "Heliopolis of the South". (There are two words for south because rs, feminine rs.t means south and sm’ means literally "upstream on the river". – Alensha ^talk 12:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, it's very pretty! – Alensha ^talk 18:49, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

References

"References"

If they aren't being used, don't include them.

That said, the following can be used for expanding the article or can be used to cite facts that are currently unreferenced:

• Gauthier, Henri (1925–1931), Dictionnaire des noms géographiques contenus dans les textes hieroglyphiques [Dictionary of Geographical Names in Hieroglyphic Texts], Vol. III, Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire [The French Institute of Oriental Archeology at Cairo] (Reprinted at Osnabrück by Otto Zeller Verlag, 1975), pp. 75–76. (in French)
• Polz, Daniel C. (2001), "Thebes", The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Vol. III, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 384–388.
• Redford, Donald Bruce (1992), "Thebes", in Freedman, David Noel (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. VI, New York: Doubleday, pp. 442–443, ISBN 0-385-42583-X.
• Strudwick, Nigel C.; et al. (1999), Thebes in Egypt: A Guide to the Tombs and Temples of Ancient Luxor, London: British Museum Press, ISBN 0-8014-8616-5.

 — LlywelynII 23:33, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 April 2016

"On the west bank, he built the his enormous mortuary temple and the equally massive Malkata palace-city which fronted a 364-hectare arificial lake."

The word "artificial" has been misspelled. I tried to correct it but I am not a registered user and so was unable to alter a semi protected page. Thank you! BakaSugiru (talk) 13:05, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

 Done and resolve "the his" as your quote - Arjayay (talk) 17:53, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

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Proposing "In literature" section

Thebes is the setting of at least a few notable novels. Would a section listing these novels be an improvement? For starters:

• A God Against the Gods & Return to Thebes
• Eye of the Moon
• Thebes at War

I suspect there are others as well. I've only done a cursory search. Eye of the Moon is an orphan, and I think this is a good opportunity to properly incorporate it into the encyclopaedia. Matthew V. Milone (talk) 15:50, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

"In popular culture" sections have problems; they often accumulate a great deal of trivia. If you're thinking of including modern novels, such a section would be more or less dedicated to a subcategory of "in popular culture". Moreover, Thebes is probably the most popular setting for novels set in ancient Egypt because it's one of very few major Egyptian cities whose geography is easy to reconstruct. Thus, the list could get very long. If you do decide to make such a section, I recommend the advice in the essay Wikipedia:"In popular culture". A. Parrot (talk) 00:14, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Good to know. In that case, it might be a bad idea. Still, it seems worth mentioning somewhere in the article what you said: that our unusual amount of knowledge about the city makes it a popular setting for stories. Thanks for the input. Matthew V. Milone (talk) 01:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

It would be worth including, but, unfortunately, I know of no reliable source that says what I just said. Without sources it's original research and can't be added to the article. A. Parrot (talk) 01:32, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Meaning of thebes

I am not a linguist, but Arabic form of its name, طیبة, may be interpreted as Pure or pleasant or neat. مسعوداص (talk) 04:31, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Biblical attribution

"This name of Thebes appears in the Bible as the "Nōʼ ʼĀmôn" (נא אמון) in the Book of Nahum and also as "No" (נא) mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and Jeremiah."

The Book of Nahum describes No Amon as "Sitting among channels, surrounded by water, the sea is its bulwark". This doesn't sound like a description of Thebes. Furthermore, the Targum and the majority of Medieval commentaries describe No Amon as Alexandria, or an ancient city that preceded it in the same location, which sounds more compatible with the description in Nahum. Additionally, the 15th century responsa of Rabbi Shlomo Duran (Rashbash chapt. 1), who resided in Algiers, distinguishes between someone travelling to the Holy Land from a distant location--which he describes as farther than No Amon--as opposed to from a close origin which is closer than No Amon. It is not logical that in Algiers he would describe travelling to the Holy Land down the Nile, but eminently reasonable that one would travel the Mediterranean, and Alexandria would be much closer than Algiers along the same path.

I'm not an archeologist and I've never edited a Wikipedia page before, so I'm reluctant to make any change personally. But, it seems to me that Nahum is not referring to Thebes as No Amon, and in the 15th century some Mediterranean port was called No Amon, perhaps Alexandria. PZM71 (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

This issue is discussed in the source cited at the end of that sentence in the article; I found a copy online, here. Apparently, this passage in Nahum has puzzled people for a long time. This paper makes it sound as though most scholars consider the No-Amon in Nahum to be Thebes, though a minority have argued that it must refer to some city in the Nile Delta where Amun was also worshipped. The author of the paper argues that because Nahum is making the point that Nineveh will suffer destruction as Thebes did, he takes a description of the geography of Nineveh and poetically transplants it to fit Thebes as well. I may write a footnote to explain this issue when I have the time. A. Parrot (talk) 16:06, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, that source was very helpful.

I'm still confused regarding the responsa of Rabbi Duran, which is how I found this topic to begin with. Perhaps, since traditional Jewish sources identified No-Amon as Alexandria, the association entered the vernacular. PZM71 (talk) 17:00, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Arabic: وسط

Removed this part in the lede: "(Arabic: وسط)" because it suggests that the name of the city lives on in Arabic in this form - which would be neat but is phonologically impossible as word-final -t disappeared in Egyptian 2,000 years before the Arabic conquest. I take it that the original idea was just to indicate how the name wꜣs.t is to be transliterated in Arabic, but in an English language article this seems irrelevant - we are not including the Chinese transliteration 瓦塞特 wa-se-te or the Russian one (Уасет), either and it is not the current name in Arabic, as far as I am aware. If there is any good reason to assume that the name indeed lived on reversing a two millennia old sound change and without being attested in Coptic in between, please provide a relevant cite below. Thanks!MikuChan39 (talk) 12:58, 21 September 2024 (UTC)