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The ancient Thebes represents the
antique city of Luxor, the Old Kingdom’s capital- called by
Homer the ‘City of one hundred gates’. It continued to be the
capital of the pharaohs till the New Kingdom. Today, at the
entrance in the Luxor Temple are two statues of 15 meters each,
from blocks of granite, representing the pharaoh sitting on his
throne, and in the main entrance`s back is the inner yard of
Ramses II, with two lines of pillars and the statues of the king
in different hypostases. Not far away, in the left side of the
ancient Thebes is the well known Valley of the Kings, the
necropolis of the antique Egypt, placed on the left shore of the
Nile. Transformed into a royal cemetery during the rule of the
Tutmes I and abandoned during the rule of the Ramses XI, here
was the place where the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, after the
process of embalming and mummification, were transported in a
solemn procession and buried in an isolated valley, in the
Thebes` hills. So far, 62 tombs of kings have been discovered
and can be visited by public. From all the capitals of the
ancient world, the ancient Thebes can be compared only with the
Babylon, its contemporary, and with the much later Rome. There
was no other town in Egypt to equal this new capital, through
the majesty and the greatness of the architectonic
constructions. By the time of the Old Kingdom, the ancient
Thebes was an obscure place. It made itself remarked in history,
only during the 11th Dynasty, when the local dynasts of the
Thebe, with the residence at Thebes, unified the state after a
period of crumbling and weakening of the royalty. |
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