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Thebes ''Thēbai'' is the Greek designation of the ancient Egyptian '''niwt''' "(The) City" and '''niwt-rst''' "(The) Southern City". It is located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile (). Thebes was the capital of '' Waset ,'' the fourth Upper Egyptian Nome (the term "Waset" was used for the name of the city as well). The city was the capital of Egypt during part of the Eleventh Dynasty ( Middle Kingdom ), and most of the Eighteenth Dynasty ( New Kingdom ), though the administration probably remained located at Memphis for much of this. With the Nineteenth Dynasty the seat of government moved to the Delta . The archaeological remains of Thebes offer a striking testimony to Egyptian civilization at its height. In modern usage, the Mortuary Temple s and Tomb s on the west bank of the river Nile are generally thought of as being part of Thebes. As the seat of the Theban being the god whom the Greeks identified with Amun ). The Greek poet Homer extolled the wealth of Thebes in the Iliad , Book 9 (c. 7th Century BCE): "... in Egyptian Thebes the heaps of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes." Luxor and Karnak are the modern-day Arabic names of the towns situated at or near the sites of two important temples that stood on the outskirts of the city. The name ''Thebes'' is often mistakenly thought to derive from the name of the Greek town called Thebes . Although the etymology is unclear, ''Thebes'' is likely a grecization of ancient Egyptian ''t3 ipt-swt'' (lit. "The Most-Select of Places"), one of the names of the temple of Karnak , which is located in the city. It is believed that Thebes was the largest city in the world from 1780 BC to 1770 BC and from 1400 to 668 BC . [http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm Rosenberg, Matt T. "Largest Cities Through History." About.com.] MAJOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN THEBES East Bank West Bank
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