Although I haven´t found an explicit mention of a link, it would make sense that the Greeks started referring to Waset as Thebes because of this connection. The somewhat famous pharaoh Senusret I was known by the Greeks as Heracles Kharops (he too was named after the god) and had the Egyptian Thebes as his capital city. Apparently the Greek Heracles/Hercules, who was from the Greek city of Thebes, had Egyptian parents and was named (by the Greeks) after the ancient Egyptian god Shu, whom the Greeks (surprisingly) referred to as Heracles (much of this can be found in History of Herodotus, book II, 43-47). I saw this thread at work earlier today and was bored (not very busy in the summer months), so I did some research on the Net. For the next 10 years it was the chief military power in Greece. 380 bc and defeated Sparta at the battles of Tegyra (375 bc ) and Leuctra (371 bc ). (And yes, Waset is indeed the Egyptian name for Thebes). Thebes and Sparta subsequently clashed, and the victorious Spartans occupied it. There is, after all, no honor among Thebes. I am not an ancient historian, but it seems plausible that Thebes, Greece stole its name from Thebes, Egypt.

It didn’t reallypeak until the 4th century BC. For (almost?) all Egyptian cities we know the ancient Egyptian name perfectly well, but we've grown used to the Greek names. The 7th century BC is also when I recall Thebes first being mentioned (due to its rivalry with Athens, and siding with the Persians). By the time the Egyptian writing was decyphered, the habit of using Greek names had already established itself firmly. The reason why we use Greek names for Egyptian cities today is simply becuase for a long time we couldn't read the Egyptian hieroglyphs and had no idea what the Egyptian names were, and were therefore forced to fall back on Greek and Roman sources.

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