Reference: Noamon
Smith
No-a'mon
(temple of Amon)
No,
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.)