Thebes

Capital of Boeotia in ancient Greece. In the Peloponnesian War it was allied with Sparta against Athens. For a short time after 371 BC when Thebes defeated Sparta at Leuctra, it was the most powerful state in Greece. Alexander the Great destroyed it in 336 BC and although it was restored, it never regained its former power.

Thebes

Ancient Egyptian wall paintings in a tomb at Thebes from about 1380 BC.

The statue of the Egyptian goddess of creation, Hathor (pronounced Hat-hor), found in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Dayr al-Bahri, Thebes, Egypt. It is appropriate that her statue was placed in the building, because the temple was intended as the elaborate tomb of Queen Hatshepsut (an 18th-dynasty queen of Egypt), and Hathor was, among many other things, the divine guardian of the resting places of the dead.

An avenue of ram-headed sphinxes leads to the entrance to the temple precinct of Amun-Ra, Karnak, Egypt. Situated on the east bank of the Nile close to the modern town of Luxor, Karnak was part of ancient Thebes. The remains of this city, which reached its peak during the New Kingdom (1550–1070 BC), form one of the largest religious complexes known to archaeology.

Greek name of an ancient city (Niut-Amen) in Upper Egypt, on the Nile. Probably founded under the first dynasty, it was the centre of the worship of Amen, and the Egyptian capital under the New Kingdom from about 1550 BC. Temple ruins survive near the villages of Karnak and Luxor, and in the nearby Valley of the Kings are buried the 18th to 20th dynasty kings, including Tutankhamen and Amenhotep III.