Dilmun Burial Mounds
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How it came to be
The Dilmun Burial Mounds are 21 burial sites in the western part of the main island of Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf. They were built over about 450 years, between 2200 and 1750 BCE, during the Early Dilmun period. Bahrain was then a hub of trade, and its wealth supported an elaborate burial tradition that extended to the whole population.
Six mound fields hold about 11,774 tombs, which were originally low cylindrical towers. Each has a central stone chamber, ringed by a low wall, with alcoves at one end. The other 15 sites contain 17 royal mounds, two-storey towers that now stand among the houses of A'ali village.
In February 1889 the British explorer Theodore Bent and his wife Mabel excavated some of the mounds. Cuneiform inscriptions from a royal mound at A'ali name Ri'mum and Yagli-El, counted among the last kings of Dilmun. A Danish team opened more tombs in the 1950s, and the site was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2019.
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