Talk:Thebes, Greece

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 * A Winner of the August 2004 West Dakota Prize

This entry has won the West Dakota Prize for successfully employing the expression "legend states''" in a complete sentence. --

Modern city's name
From looking at charts and from looking at the Athens article, the modern city would be "Thíva". WhisperToMe 23:33, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Theba of Boeotia and Theba of Egypt
Why did the Greeks name the city "Niwt-rst" or "Waset", capital of Southern Kingdom, as "Thebae", which is the name of Boeotian city?

What was the relation between two Thebas?

--IonnKorr 20:39, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

D-y-q-e-i-s, I smells a rat

 * Deger-Jalkotzy noted that the statue base from Kom el-Hetan in Amenhotep III's kingdom (LHIIIA:1) mentioned d-y-q-e-i-s[...]

I personally know that both Linear A and Linear B, as well as Babylonian, are all syllabic scripts. Egyptian doesn't write vowels. So where on earth is d-y-q-e-i-s coming from at all? What language is this claimed to be attested in?

The only alphabet systems were West Semitic but I find very odd that there is any presence of -s here when the Greek word is Thebai... in the dual, completely lacking in nominative -s. The word TE-QA in Mycenaean as far as I'm aware is not for so-called *Thegwas but *Tʰēgʷai" and we have Tʰēbai in later Classical Greek, **Thēbas. Get the grammar right. We need to resolve this confusion. What's the scoop here? --Glengordon01 05:41, 19 August 2006 (UTC) -- Okay, I tracked down the reference but this d-y-q-e-i-s claim is not in the clear yet:


 * Cline, Eric. 1987. Amenhotep III and the Aegean: A Reassessment of Egypto-Aegean Relations in the 14th Century B.C. Orientalia 56: 1-37.

Upon reading this handy article which isn't very fond of Cline's hypotheses, I have to question the source. Also mentioned here.

Certainly if this d-y-q-e-i-s is supposed to be Egyptian somehow, we can be sure it's spelled wrong because there simply is no vowel "e" represented in Egyptian script! So I'm taking it out because it's smelling like a new-agey internet myth vaguely based on a source that's already questionable. When someone can find out what the actual inscription's symbol values are supposed to be, they can add it back properly in a manner that Egyptologists could be proud of. --Glengordon01 06:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC) --

Mycenaean Greek TE-QA-I
I double-checked Ventris and Chadwick's Documents in Mycenaean Greek Word Index. TE-QA-I is not listed, and the entry for TE-QA-DE says "probably not Thebes in Boeotia", so a citation for including it as the Linear B translation of Thebes would be great! k. da-ma-te (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

TE-QA-I and TE-QA-DE have both been written as TE-PA-I and TE-PA-DE. Some scholars write PA2 and some write QA for AB *16. Docs II states that PA2 values will be found under QA, but lists the first word under TE-PA-I, which could well be a variation of TE-PA2-I (cum TE-QA-I). Leonard Palmer, in Interpretation of Mycenaean Greek Texts, lists the word as TE-PA-I. In A Companion to Linear B, Vol. 1, J.T. Killen, in Mycenaean Economy, associates TE-QA-I with Thebes (FN 24, p 166) as does Y. Duhoux in Mycenaean Anthology (pg. 370). Shinju (talk) 19:28, 06 January 2013 (UTC)

Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
I noticed there's quite a big overlap between this article and Ancient Thebes (Boeotia). Wouldn't it be better to merge the two, or to move the pre-modern part of the history section to the Ancient Thebes article? Markussep Talk 12:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree, I just came here to this talk page for exactly the same reason. The article on Ancient Thebes isn't that big certainly if you substract the overlap, so I'd suggest removing the article on Ancient Thebes and including its content in this article. Maybe I can do so myself if I have time, but I'd like to know what other editors think before I do so. AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 09:55, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, maybe it's an even better idea to create a new article called History of Thebes, Greece to link to that as the main article at the start of the History section. Then the current information in that section can be more brief, more in the character of a summary, while that dedicated article can go crazy with all the details. This is similar to how it's done for articles like Amsterdam, Washington, D.C. or Thebes' neighbour Athens. In that case we can remove the article Ancient Thebes (Boeotia) as well. What does everyone think about that? AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 10:09, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Alexander, I don't think the combined article will be extremely long, so there's no need to create a separate "history" article IMO. I'll leave a note at User talk:Dbachmann, since he created the Ancient Thebes article. Markussep Talk 14:30, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I see the problem, but consider that this is parallel to Athens:ancient Athens and Sparti:Sparta. If you merge, you'll need to substantially rewrite this article to reflect the new scope. This may be the best solution, but it's more work than just creating a redirect. Also, you would then probably need Thiva as a separate article on the modern municipality. When people say "Thebes", I suppose they more typically mean ancient Thebes than the modern place called Thiva. So instead of "merging", it is perhaps more accurate to say that you want to make this page about Ancient Thebes (Boeotia) and you want to creat a new page about Thiva. --dab (𒁳) 15:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the modern town is mostly referred to as "Thebes" as well, except maybe in travel guides. Britannica has one article "Thebes (Greece)", treating both the ancient and the modern town. You're probably right that the ancient town is better known than the modern town. Markussep Talk 18:27, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * it's the same with Sparti : Sparta. We can make use of the fact that the exact same spelling in Greek can be transcribed differently depending on whether you are talking about ancient or modern Greece. I also admit that the 'Sparti' case is a bit different as modern 'Sparti' is named after Sparta, while Thebes as far as we can tell has always been Thebes, without interruption greater than a couple of decades now and again (which is why it figures prominently in the list of oldest cities). --dab (𒁳) 13:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd say let's try merging them, I'm sure at least the history section will become a lot better that way. Markussep Talk 17:50, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I just merged the two articles. Actually it was quite easy because most of the text was literally the same. Markussep Talk 13:22, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for merging Markus! Would have helped with it myself if I would have had the time, but there were so much other classical antiquity-articles in need of improvement. Also, it's a difficult question if there should be separate articles for Thebes and Thiva, but I agree with the dab's notion that since Thebes has been continuously inhabited (except after its destruction) one article just like Athens is best. AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

recent article including information on pre-Hellenic Thebes
https://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/mom_1955-4982_2010_act_54_1_3159.pdf 100.15.127.199 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC)