Dilmun Burial Mounds

The Dilmun Burial Mounds are a UNESCO World Heritage Site comprising necropolis areas on the main island of Bahrain dating back to the Dilmun and the Umm al-Nar culture.

Bahrain has been known since ancient times as an island with a very large number of burials, the quite a number of square kilometres 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. Recent studies have shown that the estimated/approximately 350,000 ancient grave mounds could have been solely produced by the local population over a number of thousands of years.