At the end of the Second Intermediate Period 1650– 1550 b.c.e., the local Theban princely family drove the Hyksos from Egypt and reunited the “Two Lands.” This inaugurated the New Kingdo
Trang 1of the Twelfth Dynasty (1985–1795 b.c.e.) made it the
capital of Upper Egypt
At the end of the Second Intermediate Period (1650–
1550 b.c.e.), the local Theban princely family drove the
Hyksos from Egypt and reunited the “Two Lands.” This
inaugurated the New Kingdom, the time of Thebes’s
greatest glory and that of Amun, its god The Eighteenth
Dynasty (1570–1293 b.c.e.) ruled from Thebes, with the
brief exception of Akhenaten (1350–44 b.c.e.) The
rulers of this dynasty built extensively at Thebes
The present temple of Amun at Karnak was begun at
this time and endowed, enlarged, and embellished right
down to the Greco-Roman period The pharaohs of the
Nineteenth Dynasty (1293–1185 b.c.e.) moved their
capital to the eastern Delta, but Thebes remained a
pres-tigious religious center and burial site Power inevitably
passed into the hands of the high priests of Amun, who
controlled a huge clerical corporation that owned land
all over Egypt By the end of the New Kingdom (1069
b.c.e.) the priesthood of Amun controlled two-thirds of
all temple lands and 90 percent of Nile shipping Thebes
was sacked and looted by the Assyrian king
Ashurbani-pal in 664 b.c.e By this time the importance of the city
even as a religious site had begun to diminish as
suc-cessive foreign conquests, Persian, Greek and Roman,
forced Egypt to look north to the Mediterranean
On the east bank of the Nile stand the temples of
Amun at Karnak and Luxor The site at Karnak includes
the temple of Amun, the temple of Mut (the Mother),
his wife, and the temple of their son Khonsu, a moon
god To the north of the precinct of Amun sits the
tem-ple of Montu, the old falcon war god of Thebes At
the south, at the end of an avenue of sphinxes, is the
temple at Luxor This is dedicated to Amun in his fertil-ity aspect: It was called the “Place of Seclusion.” It was the destination of the Theban Triad at the “Beautiful Festival of Opet,” celebrated in the second month of the Inundation Statues of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu were placed on their barques, loaded onto barges, and towed amid scenes of great jubilation from Karnak to Luxor Thebes of the dead on the west bank is a rich archae-ological site At Deir el-Bahri, the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut preserves the illustrated record of the expe-dition to the fabled land of Punt that she ordered There are several well-preserved mortuary temples including that of Ramses III at Medinet Habu The Valley of the Kings contains the famous tomb of Tutankhamun, the tomb of Ramses VI with its astronomical ceiling, and that of Thutmose III The Valley of the Queens holds the magnifi cently restored tomb of Ramses II’s chief wife, Nefertari Any Theban palaces, built of mud brick, have long since vanished Even the grand palace
of the opulent Amenophis III at Malqata on the west bank has disappeared However, the site of the crafts-men and artisans’ village at Deir el-Medina and their tombs opens a window into the lives and hopes of ordi-nary Egyptians
See also Egypt, culture and religion; Old Kingdom, Egypt
Further reading: Clayton, Peter A Chronicles of the
Pha-raohs London: Thames and Hudson, 1998; Romer, John Ancient Lives: Daily Life in Egypt of the Pharaohs New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984; Siliotti, Alberto
Guide of the Valley of the Kings New York: Barnes and Noble, 1997; Strudwick, Nigel and Helen Thebes in Egypt
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999
John Barclay Burns
Themistocles
(c 524–459 b.c.e.) statesman and general
Themistocles was a great Athenian statesman and gen-eral who played an important role in the Second Per-sian War by leading the Greeks to victory Born to an Athenian father, Neocles, and what seems to have been
a foreign mother, Themistocles demonstrated great potential from an early age He is said to have spent his leisure time in youth composing and performing mock speeches, unlike other children who remained idle or engaged in play An early teacher of Themistocles told him the following: “there is going to be nothing
insig-The ancient city of insig-Thebes lay to the east of the great temple of
Karnak As the temple expanded, the city had to move
458 Themistocles