which probably formed part of the royal palace. Northward and far back in the foot-hills is the Ptolemaic temple of Deir el Medina, and beyond under the cliffs of Deir el Bahri the terrace temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the walls of which are adorned with scenes from her expedition to Puoni (Somaliland) in search of incense trees, and many other subjects. The necropolis extends from Kurna in the north through Drah abu’l nagga, the Assasif, and Shekh abd el Kurna to Kurnet Murrai of Medinet Habu. The finest tombs are of the XVIIIth Dynasty. Far behind Medinet Habu are the Tombs of the Queens, where royal relatives of the XXth Dynasty are buried; and immediately behind the lofty cliffs of Deir el Bahri, but accessible only by a very circuitous route from Kurna, are the tombs of the kings (from Tethmosis I. onward to the end of the XXth Dynasty) in the Biban el Moluk and the Western Valley. They are decorated with religious scenes and texts, especially those which describe the passage of the sun through the underworld. Those of Seti I. and Rameses III. are the most remarkable. These royal sepulchres are long galleries excavated in the rock with chambers at intervals: in one of the innermost chambers was laid the body in its sarcophagus. In the XXIst Dynasty, when tomb robberies were rife and most of their valuables had been stolen, the royal mummies were removed from place to place and at last deposited for safety in the tomb of Amenophis II. and in the burial-place of the priest-kings at Deir el Bahri. The finding of the two cachettes nearly intact has been among the greatest marvels of archaeological discovery, and the systematic exploration of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings by Theodore M. Davis has been annually rewarded with results of the highest interest.
See Baedeker’s Egypt; E. Naville, (Temple of) Deir el Bahari, introduction and parts i.-v. (London, 1894–1906); W. M. F. Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes (ruined temples on west bank), (London, 1397); G. Daressy, Notice explicative des ruines de Médinet Habu (Cairo, 1397); G. Maspero, “Les Momies royales de Deir el Bahari” in Mémoires de la mission archéologique française au Caire, tome I.; and many other works. (F. Ll. G.)
THEBES (anciently Θῆβαι, Thebae, or in poetry sometimes
Θήβα, in modern Greek Phiva or, according to the corrected
pronunciation, Thivae), an ancient Greek city in Boeotia, is
situated on low hilly ground of gentle slope a little north of the
range of Cithaeron, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on
the edge of the Boeotian plain, about 44 m. from Athens, whence
it is reached by two carriage-roads and by railway since 1904.
It has about 4800 inhabitants, and is the seat of a bishop.
The present town occupies the site of the ancient citadel, the
Cadmea; two fragments of ancient wall are visible on the north,
and another, belonging either to the citadel or the outer wall,
on the south. Two streams, rising a little south of the town,
and separated by an average distance of about half a mile,
flow on the two sides, and are lost in the plain. These are the
ancient Ismenus on the east and Dirce (Δίρκη) on the west,
which gave to the town its name διπόταμος. The Dirce, now
Plakiótissa, has several springs. From the west side of the
Cadmea another copious fountain (Paraporti) falls to the Dirce.
In a suburb to the east is another (Fountain of St Theodore),
and north-west are two more. The Cadmea itself is supplied
with water brought from an unknown source to the south by
works supposed of prehistoric antiquity. It now enters the
town by an aqueduct of twenty arches of Frankish construction.
The “waters” of Thebes are celebrated both by Pindar and by
the Athenian poets, and the site is still, as described by Dicaearchus
(3rd century B.C.), “all springs,” κάθυδρος πᾶσα. One,
from which a pasha of Negroponte (Euboea) is said to have
supplied his table, is still called “the spring of the cadi.” Some
of the marble basins, seats, &c., remain, and, with the fragments
of wall above mentioned, are the only relics of the classic time.
The most curious of later buildings is the church of St Luke,
south-east of the Cadmea, believed to contain the tomb of the
evangelist. From the abundance of water the place is favourable
to gardens, and the neighbouring plain is extremely fertile.
But the population is scanty, and the town at present of no
importance.
History.—The record of the earliest days of Thebes was preserved among the Greeks in an abundant mass of legends which rival the myths of Troy in their wide ramification and the influence which they exerted upon the literature of the classical age. Five main cycles of story may be distinguished: (1) the foundation of the citadel Cadmea by Cadmus, and the growth of the Sparti or “Sown Men” (probably an etiological myth designed to explain the origin of the Theban nobility which bore that name in historical times); (2) the building of a “seven-gated” wall by Amphion, and the cognate stories of Zethus, Antiope and Dirce; (3) the tale of the “house of Laius,” culminating in the adventures of Oedipus and the wars of the “Seven” and the Epigoni; (4) the advent of Dionysus; and (5) the exploits of Heracles. It is difficult to extract any historical fact out of this maze of myths; the various groups cannot be fully co-ordinated, and a further perplexing feature is the neglect of Thebes in the Homeric poems. At most it seems safe to infer that it was one of the first Greek communities to be drawn together within a fortified city, that it owed its importance in prehistoric as in later days to its military strength, and that its original “Cadmean” population was distinct from other inhabitants of Boeotia such as the Minyae of Orchomenus.
In the period of great invasions from the north Thebes received settlers of that stock which in historical times was homogeneously spread over Boeotia. The central position and military security of the city naturally tended to raise it to a commanding position among the Boeotians, and from early days its inhabitants endeavoured to establish a complete supremacy over their kinsmen in the outlying towns. This centralizing policy is as much the cardinal fact of Theban history as the counteracting effort of the smaller towns to resist absorption forms the main chapter of the story of Boeotia. No details of the earlier history of Thebes have been preserved, except that it was governed by a land-holding aristocracy who safeguarded their integrity by rigid statutes about the ownership of property and its transmission. In the late 6th century the Thebans were brought for the first time into hostile contact with the Athenians, who helped the small fortress of Plataea to maintain its independence against them, and in 506 repelled an inroad into Attica. The aversion to Athens best serves to explain the unpatriotic attitude which Thebes displayed during the great Persian invasion. Though a contingent of 700 was sent to Thermopylae and remained there with Leonidas to the end, the governing aristocracy soon after joined the enemy with great readiness and fought zealously on his behalf at the battle of Plataea (470). The victorious Greeks subsequently punished Thebes by depriving it of the presidency of the Boeotian League, and an attempt by the Spartans to expel it from the Delphic amphictyony was only frustrated by the intercession of Athens. In 457 Sparta, needing a counterpoise against Athens in central Greece, reversed her policy and reinstated Thebes as the dominant power in Boeotia. The great fortress served this purpose well by holding out as a base of resistance when the Athenians overran and occupied the rest of the country (457–447). In the Peloponnesian War the Thebans, embittered by the support which Athens gave to the smaller Boeotian towns, and especially to Plataea, which they vainly attempted to reduce in 431, were firm allies of Sparta, which in turn helped them to besiege Plataea and allowed them to destroy the town after capture (427). In 424 at the head of the Boeotian levy they inflicted a severe defeat upon an invading force of Athenians at Delium, and for the first time displayed the effects of that firm military organization which eventually raised them to predominant power in Greece. After the downfall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War the Thebans, Ending that Sparta intended to protect the states which they desired to annex, broke off the alliance. In 404 they had urged the complete destruction of Athens, in 403 they secretly supported the restoration of its democracy in order to find in it a counterpoise against Sparta. A few years later, influenced perhaps in part by Persian gold, they forced on the
