Thebes (3)

An ancient Egyptian city located approximately 450 miles (724 kilometers) south of present day Cairo in Upper Egypt, i.e. southern Egypt, on the eastern side of the Nile river across from the Valley of the Kings; now known as Al-Uqsur.

The Egyptians told the historian Herodotus that two priestesses had been kidnapped from the oracular shrine of the Egyptian Zeus, i.e., Ammon, at Thebes by Phoenicians and that one had been sold to the Libyans and the other had been sold to the Greeks; these two women are reputed to have founded the first centers of prophecy in those countries; the shrine in Greece was founded at the city of Dodona in Epirus in western Greece; the people of Dodona said that the priestess came to them as a black dove and, in a human voice, commanded the inhabitants to establish an oracular shrine to Zeus.

Approximate east longitude 25.68 and north latitude 32.65.

• Histories, book 2, chapters 54-58