Nahum 3:8

"Art thou better than No-amon, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about her; whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was the sea?"

In a number of ways No-Amon (capitalizing Amon stresses the name of their false god) was the greatest and most influential city of the pre-Assyrian world. "Here are the mightiest ruins of ancient civilization to be found anywhere on earth.[22] It came into prominence about 2,100 years B.C.; "From that time it held a leading place in Egypt."[23] It was long the capital of Egypt and was nicknamed, "The city of a hundred gates; it was the cult center of the triad of Amon, Mut and Khonsu. 'Amon' indicated the relationship between the city and its principal god."[24] The expression No-Amon is found only in this verse, indicating that Nahum connected the place with the larger drama of the Scarlet Sea-Beast already in the world for a long time; but which would be more adequately identified in later times by Daniel and the apostle John. No-Amon bore exactly the same relationship to EGYPT the first head of the Seven Headed Sea-Beast, that Nineveh bore to Assyria the second head.

As to the identity of No-Amon, it was most certainly Thebes. The verse before us might appear at first glance to indicate a delta city such as Alexandria, but the Nile was called "the sea" poetically, "as in Job 41:31, and Isaiah 18:2; and with that difficulty removed, there is no doubt that the place is Thebes."[25] "The Arabs still call the Nile the sea."[26] "No had been an earlier, another Nineveh,"[27] as we have seen, the great first head of the Sea-Beast; but in Nahum's time Ashurbanipal (663 B.C.) had captured No-Amon, giving a mortal wound to the first head, but becoming itself the second head of the great, monolithic organization of men against God which has dominated the whole history of the human race, and even now, under the eighth manifestation of the 'horns," which also were part of the beast, multiple governments all over the world are the modern (and perhaps final) successors to the power and authority of the Sea-Beast. Thus, there are eschatological overtones in Nahum of the very greatest significance, as some scholars have discerned.

Those who date Nahum prior to 663 B.C. view these words as a prophecy of No-Amon's destruction; but we believe that event was past when Nahum wrote, the prophet's discernment of Nineveh's usurpation of the former status of Thebes being evident in the very denunciations uttered by the prophet. "He holds up No-Amon as an example to Nineveh of the fate that awaited them."[28]