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Toponymy

The Egyptian name for Thebes was wꜣs.t, "City of the wꜣs ", the sceptre of the pharaohs, a long staff with an animal's head and a forked base. From the end of the New Kingdom, Thebes was known in Egyptian as njw.t-jmn, the "City of Amun ", the chief of the Theban Triad of deities whose other members were Mut and Khonsu. This name of Thebes appears in the Tanakh as the "Nōʼ ʼĀmôn" (נא אמון) in the Book of Nahum and also as "No" (נא) mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and Jeremiah.

"Thebes" is sometimes claimed to be the Latinised form of Ancient Greek: Θῆβαι, the hellenized form of Demotic Egyptian tꜣ jpt ("the temple"), referring to jpt-swt; the temple is now known by its Arabic name, Karnak ("fortified village"), on the northeast bank of the city. Since Homer refers to the metropolis by this name, and since Demotic script did not appear until a later date, the etymology is doubtful. As early as Homer 's Iliad, the Greeks distinguished the Egyptian Thebes as "Thebes of the Hundred Gates" (Θῆβαι ἑκατόμπυλοι, Thēbai hekatómpyloi) or "Hundred-Gated Thebes", as opposed to the " Thebes of the Seven Gates " (Θῆβαι ἑπτάπυλοι, Thēbai heptápyloi) in Boeotia, Greece.

In the interpretatio graeca, Amun was rendered as Zeus Ammon. The name was therefore translated into Greek as Diospolis, "City of Zeus". To distinguish it from the numerous other cities by this name, it was known as the "Great Diospolis" (Διόσπολις Μεγάλη, Diospolis Megálē; Latin: Diospolis Magna). The Greek names came into wider use after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, when the country came to be ruled by the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty.