no-amon Summary and Overview

(temple of Amon) #Na 3:8| No, #Jer 46:25; Eze 30:14,16| a city of Egypt, better known under the name of Thebes or Diospolis Magna, the ancient and splendid metropolis of upper Egypt The second part of the first form as the name of Amen, the chief divinity of Thebes, mentioned or alluded to in connection with this place in Jeremiah. There is a difficulty as to the meaning of No. It seems most reasonable to suppose that No is a Shemitic name and that Amen is added in Nahum (l.c.) to distinguish Thebes from some other place bearing the same name or on account of the connection of Amen with that city. The description of No-amon as "situated among the rivers, the waters round about it" (Nah. l.c.), remarkably characterizes Thebes. (It lay on both sides of the Nile, and was celebrated for its hundred gates, for its temples, obelisks, statues. etc. It was emphatically the city of temples, in the ruins of which many monuments of ancient Egypt are preserved, The plan of the city was a parallelogram, two miles from north to south and four from east to west, but none suppose that in its glory if really extended 33 miles along both aides of the Nile. Thebes was destroyed by Ptolemy, B.C. 81, and since then its population has dwelt in villages only. --ED.)

NO-A'MON (place of Amon ?), a populous and celebrated city of Egypt, and the capital of Upper Egypt, named after the god Amon, and called by the Greeks Diospolis, or "city of Zeus," but better known by the name of "Thebes." It was situated on both sides of the Nile, from 400 to 500 miles from its mouth. The only mention of the city in the Bible occurs in the prophecies. It is called No, Eze 30:14-16; Jer 46:25, and, margin, No-amon, rendered "populous No." Nah 3:8. The Nile valley at Thebes, resembles a vast amphitheatre, enclosed by the grand forms of the Arabian and Libyan mountains, the river running through nearly the centre of this space. The area surrounded by these mountain bulwarks is filled with ruins - avenues of sphinxes and statues, miles in length, at the end of which were massive columnal structures, the entrances to immense temples and palaces, and colossal images of the ancient Pharaohs, relics of regal magnificence so extensive and stupendous that the beholder might well imagine all the grandest ruins of the Old World had been brought together on this Theban plain. The extent of the city has been variously given by historians. According to Strabo, it covered an area 5 miles in length and 3 miles in breadth, and Diodorus makes its circuit about the same. Wilkinson also infers from its ruins that its length must have been about 5 1/4 miles and its breadth 3 miles. Others suppose that the ancient city of Thebes, or No-amon, included the three sites of Luxor, Karnak, and Thebes, and that in the days of its glory, from b.c. 1600 to b.c. 800, it stretched Colossi: the Vocal Memnon of Thebes. about 33 miles on both banks of the Nile. Certainly the ruins testify to a city of great splendor, whose buildings, palaces, and monuments were among the most imposing in the world. The temples, tombs, and palaces have been described under the article Egypt. The two colossi, or immense statues, before the destroyed temple of Amenophis III., are still standing, partially buried in the sand and considerably mutilated. They are, however, yet some 60 feet high, and one of them is the "vocal Memnon," so celebrated for the musical sound which it is reputed to have given forth, when touched by the morning beams of the rising sun, as a greeting of Amenophis to his mother, Aurora. One of the obelisks of Luxor, or Thebes, was transported to France in the reign of Louis Philippe, and now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The grandeur of Thebes during the period when it was the capital of Upper Egypt was well known to Homer, who speaks of its hundred gates and twenty thousand war-chariots, and Diodorus was informed that Sesostris took the field with 600,000 infantry, 24,000 horsemen, and 27,000 chariots. Thebes was captured and sacked by Sargon, probably in the reign of Hezekiah, Nah 3:8, 1 Kgs 16:10; was twice destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and by Assurbanipal, as predicted by Jeremiah, Jer 46:25-26; and was again burned by the Persian Cambyses, b.c. 525, and finally destroyed by Ptolemy X. Lathurus, b.c. 81.