In the case of Thebes we cannot point out, even to this slight extent, the arrangement of the city. We cannot tell where the palaces of the king and the dwellings of the great were situated. All that we know is that the city properly speaking, the Diospolis of the Greeks, so called on account of the great temple of Amen which formed its centre, was on the right bank of the river; that its houses were massed round those two great sacred inclosures which we now call Karnak and Luxor; that it was intersected by wide streets, those which united Karnak and Luxor to each other and to the river being bordered with sphinxes. These great streets were the δρόμοι of the Greek writers; others they called βασιλική ῥύμη, king's street.[20] The blocks of houses which bordered these great causeways were intersected by narrow lanes.[21] The quarter on the left bank of the river was a sort of suburb inhabited chiefly by priests, embalmers, and others practising those lugubrious branches of industry which are connected with the burial of the dead.[22] The whole of this western city was known in the time of the Ptolemies and the Romans as the Memnonia.[23] [20] See Brugsch-Bey's topographical sketch of a part of ancient Thebes in the _Revue archéologique_ of M. E. REVILLOUT, 1880 (plates 12 and 13). [21] See, in the _Revue archéologique_, the _Données géographiques et topographiques_ _sur Thébes extraites par MM. Brugsch et Revillout des Contrats démotiques et des Pièces corrélatives_, p. 177. [22] E. REVILLOUT, _Taricheutes et Choachytes_ (in the _Zeitschrift für Ægyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde_, 1879 and 1880). [23] In the Egyptian language, buildings like the Ramesseum and Medinet-Abou were called Mennou, or buildings designed to preserve some name from oblivion. This word the Greeks turned into μεμνόνια, because they thought that the term mennou was identical with the Homeric hero Memnon, to whom they also attributed the two famous colossi in the plain of Thebes. EBERS, _Ægypten_, p. 280. We shall not attempt to discuss the few hints given by the Greek writers as to the extent of Thebes. Even if they were less vague and contradictory than they are, they would tell us little as to the density of the population.[24] Diodorus says that there were once houses of four and five stories high at Thebes, but he did not see them himself, and it is to the time of the fabulous monarch Busiris that he attributes them.[25] In painted representations we never find a house of more than three stories, and they are very rare. As a rule we find a ground-floor, one floor above that, and a covered flat roof on the top.[26]