| Duration: | 3 Hour(s) - 30 Minute(s) |
| Tour Category: | Half Day Tour |
Visit amongst Bahrain’s mysterious ancient remains are the thousands of burial mounds that dominate the landscape north of the Island. Spanning the Dilmun era (3rd to 1st millennium BC) to the Tylos era (200 BC to 300 AD) the burial mounds are unique in terms of sheer number and concentration. The best-preserved and most impressive mounds are the royal burial mounds in the village of A’ali.
Pottery workshops in the vicinity of the mounds have developed organically over the years allowing the artisans to incorporate their installations around the tombs and even using burial chambers as kilns. The potters fire their pieces using traditional methods that have been handed down generation after generation.
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Kindly Note the Following:
* Sightseeing is on a request basis
* All terms & conditions apply
Explore More About Dilmun Burial Mounds:
Bahrain has been known since ancient times as an island with a very large number of burials, the (originally) quite a number of square kilometers of mounds were said to be one of the largest cemeteries in the ancient world. The cemeteries are concentrated in the north of the island, on the hard stony areas slightly above the arable farming soils – the south of the island is mainly sandy and desert-like.
The Dilmun Burial Mounds, built between 2200 and 1750 BCE, span over 21 archaeological sites in the western part of the island. Six of these sites are burial mound fields consisting of a few dozen to several thousand tumuli. In all, there are about 11,774 burial mounds, originally in the form of cylindrical low towers. The other 15 sites include 17 royal mounds, constructed as two-storey sepulchral towers.
The burial mounds are evidence of the Early Dilmun civilization, around the 2nd millennium BCE, during which Bahrain became a trade hub whose prosperity enabled the inhabitants to develop an elaborate burial tradition applicable to the entire population. These tombs illustrate globally unique characteristics, not only in terms of their number, density, and scale but also in terms of details such as burial chambers equipped with alcoves.
