Thebes. Karnak (A. Vol III, Pl. 51). François Joseph Lancret (18th. century). from the Imperial Edition of the Description of Egypt Engraving. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1820-1829. 43 1/2 x 31 inches sheet. Thebes was prominent by c. 3200 BCE owing largely to the rise in popularity of the cult of the god Amun and was known for its wealth and grandeur. In the 8th C. BCE, long after Thebes had seen better days, the Greek poet Homer would still write famously of the city in his Iliad, “…in Egyptian Thebes the heaps of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes” and the Greeks refered to the city as “The Great City of the Gods.” During the Amarna Period Thebes was the world’s largest city with a population at around 80,000 people.