See the Latin monographs on theatrical representa- tions cited by Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 172. See MysiEKiES.
Thebes (Tiiiin.E, or Diospolis Magna) was the Greek name of a city of Egypt, and its cajiital during the empire, called in the Bible No-Amon ("(Ti^N N3 ; Sept. /uf pif 'Afifjiiov; Nah. iii,8) or Xo (N3; Sept. ilwa- TToXis'- Jer. xlvi, 25; Ezek. xxx, 14, 15, IG), famous in all ancient history.
I. jVa7)i€. — The ancient Egyptian names of Thebes are, as usual, two. The civil name, perhaps the more ancient of the two, is .-1^-/, Ap-tii (Brugsch, Cj^ographi- sche Inschri/len, i. 177, pi. xxxvi, No. 781-784). Hence the Coptic tape, which shows that the fcm. article t was in this case transferred in pronunciation, and explain.s the origin of the classical forms, 0?;/3//, Oiijiai, Thehe. Tlu'ba (see Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes, ii, 136, 137). The sacred name has two forms, Pa- Amen or perhaps Par-A men (Brugsch, Geographische Inschiiften, i, 177, No. 780), the " house of Amen," or Jupiter-Am- mon, preserved in the Co\ii\c piamoiin ; and Nv-Amen, the " city of Amen,'' the sound of the first part of which has been discovered by M. Cbabas, who vesuX'S, Xo-Amvn {Recherches sur le Norn Egypt, de Theties. p. 5). The lat- ter form of the sacred name is tiaiiscribed in the Hebrew No-Amon, and it is easy to understand the use of its first part Nu, " the city," instead of the whole, at a time when Thebes was still the most important city of Egypt. This sacred name of Thebes, " the abode of Amon," the Greeks reproduced in their iJiospnIis (Aiot; ttoXic), es- pecially with the adtlition the Great (?) /uyrtX/;), de- noting that this was the chief seat of Jniiiter-Ammon, and distinguishing it from JHospol.is the Less (>) jjuKpa), Of the twenty iiomes, or districts, into which Upper Egypt was divided, the fourth in order, proceeding northward from Nubia, was designated in the hiero- glyphics as Za'm — the Pbathyrite of the Greeks — and Thebes appears as the '• Z«'M-city," the principal city or metropolis of the Za^m nome. In laier times the name ZiCm was applied in common sfieecb to a partic- ular locality on the western side of Thebes.
II. Position. — The situation of Thebes with reference to the rest of Egypt well suited it to be the capital of the country. Though farther from the INIediterranean and Syria than INIemphis, it was more secure from inva- sion; and if it was far from the northern trade, it com- manded the chief line of commerce from the Red Sea. The actual site is, perliaps, the best of any ancient town of Upper Egypt. Here the valley, usually straitened by the mountains on one side, if not on both, opens out into a plain which is comparatively spacious. On the west bank the mountains leave a broad band of cultivable land; on the east they recede in a semicircle. On the former side they rise to a fine peak about 1200 feet high, unlike the level cliff-like form of the opposite range, a form seldom varied on either bank tlironghont the whole valley. The plain between is about two miles long, and has an extreme breadth of about four miles, no large space for a great capital except in Egypt. Through the centre of this plain fiows the river Nile, usually at this point about half a mile in width, but at the inundation overflowing the plain, esiiccially upon the western bank, for a breadth of two or more miles.
The monuments do not arrest the attention of the trav- eller as he sails up the river as do the pyramids of Mem- phis. On the east the massive fort-like winged portal of El-Karnak and the colonnade of El-Uksur (Liixor), and on the west the hills honeycombed with sepulchral grottos, are the most remarkable objects to be seen, but, being far apart, they are singly seen from the river. If viewed from the western mountain, the many monu- ments of Thebes give an idea of the grandeur of this ancient city, the greatest in the world for magnifi- cence.
III. TJhtory. — 1. Classical. — The origin of the city is lost ill antiquity. Niebuhr is of opinion that Thebes was much older than Memphis, and that "after the centre of Egyptian life was transferred to Lower Egypt, Memphis acquired its greatness through the ruin of
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Thebes" {Lectures on A ncient History, lect. vii). Other authorities assign priority to Memphis. But both cities (Into from our earliest authentic linovvledge of Egyptian historv. The first allusion to Thebes in classical liter- ature is tl\e familiar passage of the Iliad (ix, 381-385) : " Egyptian Thebes, where are vast treasures laid up in tlie houses; where are a hundred gates, and from each two hundred men go forth with horses and chariots." Homer — speaking with a poet's license, and not with the accuracy of a statistician — no doubt incorporated into his verse the glowing accounts of the Egyptian capital current in his time. Wilkinson thinks it con- clusive against a literal un<ierstanding of Homer that no traces of an ancient city-wall can be found at Thebes, and accepts as probable the suggestion of Diodorus Sic- ulus that the "gates" of Homer may have been the imipyLea of the temples: " Nou centum portas habuisse urbein, sed nudta et ingentia templonnn vestibula" (i, 4."), 7). In the time of Diodorus, the city-wall, if any there was, had already disappeared, and the question of its existence in Homer's time was in dispute. But, on the other hand, to regard the "gates" of Homer as temple-porches is to make these the barracks of the army, since from these gates the horsemen and chariots issue forth to war. The almost universal custom of walling the cities of antitjnity, and the poet's reference to the gates as pouring forth troops, point strongly to the supposition that the vast area of Thebes was surround- ed with a wall having many gates.