A recent Newsgroup post on alt.history.ancient-egypt by Katherine Griffis-Greenberg includes some fascinating and thought-provoking technical information relating to the orthography and etymology of Thebes…
“Thebes” is the Greek name given to the area which was called, in
Egyptian, /wAst[y] mnTw nswt/ [R19-X149-G7C-O49:X1*Z1], which means the
“city of Montu in the /wAst/ nome.” It was referred to in most cases
simply as /nswt/ “the city” of the /wAst/ province (nome).
The G7C determinative indicates the city itself was sacred to Montu, a
falcon war-god, whose temple was located in Tod (ancient /Drty/) within
the /wAst/ nome. Thus the “city” referred to only a portion of the
complex environment we think of today as ancient Thebes, and subject to
being _part_ of the larger complex. There were separate names (and city
designations) for Luxor, Karnak, the West Bank, Malkata, etc. which
means that one cannot think of /wAst/ as a city name, IMO, but as a
nome, which had several major places within (such as Armant /iwny/).