THEBES and the KADMEIA
THEBES did have Mycenaean walls and a rough outline can be seen if you look at aerial shots of the modern city but the Kadmeia has been reduced to a few walls and corners and odd remains of rooms or workshops that show up now and then when older buildings are torn down.
It may have been the leading power in Boeotia once but now its basically a country town.
It retains one Mycenaean feature the love of designers for adding walls to oval or triangular shaped sites often preexisting in the Helladic or even Neolithic
Here is an old map made by some one who has clearly based his map on descriptions of the Classical era city by Pausanias. We have no idea though if Thebes would had outer suburbs in the Mycenaean era?
The map also does not show that there were streams running along both the western and eastern sides of the Kadmeia or stress that Thebes was a junction for several ancient roads.
When Copais was a lake and wetland rather than a drained irrigated plain Thebes location would have allowed it to control roads and travel along the southern and eastern sides of the lake and access to the coast to the north east and block roads south east to Attica and the Isthmus.
Take a close look at this and then please also check Google Earth for recent aerial shots.
This cartographer felt the walls of Thebes covered a smaller area however at least he shows both streams and some roads and the Kadmeia area.
Another location location location site.
Hills and rivers and roads.
Next time Minyan Orchomenos.
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