Thebes
//θiːbz// name, noun
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 plural of thebe form-of, plural
Proper Noun
- 1 A city in central Greece, the capital city of Boeotia and an important political centre in antiquity.
- 2 An ancient city and archaeological site in Upper Egypt, having functioned as capital city at times during the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom.
Example
More examples"The Sphinx had eaten hundreds of people on their way to the city of Thebes, because they could not answer the riddle the cunning Sphinx had asked them."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek Θῆβαι (Thêbai), from two different sources. The name of the Greek city is further derived from Ionic-Attic Θήβη (Thḗbē), from Mycenaean Greek 𐀳𐀣 (te-qa /Tʰēgʷā/), from Proto-Hellenic *Tʰēgʷā, while the name of the Egyptian city is from Egyptian Demotic Egyptian tꜣ-jpy (“Thebes”, literally “the temple”), from earlier Egyptian tꜣ (“the”) + i-p:t-O45 (jpt, “Luxor”, literally “inner sanctum”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.