Baḥrayn (al-) [ancient Dilmun / Tylos]

The Bahrain archipelago, in the Arabian-Persian Gulf, was the centre of two pre-Islamic cultural areas: Dilmun, from the late 3rd millennium BCE onwards, and Tylos, after the classical name the island is known as in ancient Greek sources.

The Bahrain archipelago (Ar. al-Baḥrayn, “the Two Seas”) consists of two main islands, Bahrain and Muharraq, associated with nearly thirty much smaller islands, islets and shoals located not far from the western shore of the Arabian-Persian Gulf, between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Given its strategic position within the Gulf and its many artesian springs and agricultural possibilities described since Classical Antiquity, it has been a privileged place for archaeological research since the end of the 19th century. Excavations are still ongoing today but are limited by the reduced area of the current Kingdom of Bahrain (ca. 780 sq.km) and, above all, by rapid urbanization, concentrated in the most settled sectors during Antiquity.

The ancient history and archaeology of the archipelago are mainly organised around two primary cultures during the pre-Islamic period: Dilmun, of which Bahrain became the main centre at the very end of the 3rd millennium BCE, then Tylos, the Greek name given to the island in Hellenistic times.

Dilmun appears in the oldest Mesopotamian textual references around 3300 BCE, but this culture clearly originated in mainland Arabia, and Bahrain does not figure in secure testimonies of this culture before the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. A rather long hiatus also separates these first insular traces of Dilmun from the earlier Arabian Neolithic occupations recorded at al-Markh and Jabal Dukhan. The name Dilmun has had considerable longevity in Bahrain and is mentioned until the end of the 6th century BCE. Recent research has moved beyond the chronological scheme traditionally adopted for many years (Ancient, Middle and Late Dilmun, a terminology corresponding to the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Bronze Age and the Iron Age), and has contributed to better defining the stages of this development in Bahrain.

Early Dilmun

The date of ca. 2050 BCE stands out today as a key pivot for identifying two distinct phases within the Early Dilmun period. The earlier phase extends roughly between 2250 and 2050 BCE and illustrates a lowly-hierarchised society, likely organised into local chiefdoms according to family or tribal groupings. The burial customs of this early phase (now referred to as “Tribal Dilmun”) are relatively uniform, except for the layout of a few tumuli of “chiefs”, explicitly surrounded by an outer ring wall. From 2050 BCE onwards, the second phase coincides with the shift in the centre of Dilmun power to Bahrain and the rapid development of a well-structured Dilmun state. Significant urban investments resulted in the erection of a city wall in Qalʿat al-Bahrain, hitherto a modest village, now protecting a town of ca. 12 hectares, with a massive palace associated with a probable temple and large warehouses. The site became the capital of Dilmun, its main harbour, and the residence of its sovereigns, whose links with the other Syro-Mesopotamian Amorite dynasties are well established today. Other urban centres developed in Saar and Diraz, and an important temple was built in Barbar, dedicated to Enki, the tutelary god of Dilmun. A vast royal cemetery, composed of several circular mausoleums generally exceeding ten metres in height, was created in Aʿali, nearly 8 km south of the capital. Finally, a new type of stamp seal gained acceptance for everyday use. The standardised “Dilmun seal” is an iconic artefact of the Dilmun material culture, and constitutes significant evidence for this major structural organisation of society and the development of a centralised state. It was primarily an administrative tool used to regulate trade and civil life by certifying authenticity and ownership. Around one thousand Dilmun stamp seals have been found in Bahrain, recovered from burial contexts and dwellings. Today, their complex iconography remains the only artistic manifestation of Dilmun.

Due to the insular position of Bahrain, its strategic position in the Gulf and its privileged environment, it became the Gulf warehouse during this period, a trade emporium where products from Indus, Iran and Oman converged. Timber, precious stones and metals, including the ubiquitous copper of Magan, and local resources such as dates and “fish eyes” (pearls) were primarily destined for Sumer, the leading partner of Dilmun. Skilfully managed by the “merchants of Dilmun”, recurrently mentioned in the Mesopotamian economic texts, this commercial hub peaked in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium BCE.

However, the most original feature of Early Dilmun culture lies in the burial customs observed in the vast fields of tumuli in the northern and western parts of Bahrain island. The number of burial mounds was originally estimated at c. 80,000, and they have captured the attention of travellers and explorers for centuries. Although this tradition could not have existed in total isolation and arguably has its roots in the nearby continent, the documented burial tradition in Bahrain at the end of the Early Bronze Age is unique. The ten or so tumuli fields on the island (now registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list) are considered as one of the largest ancient cemeteries in the World, generating a distinctive landscape in Bahrain. They have long remained the only visible archaeological monuments on the island, targeted from the end of the 19th century by European archaeologists. The discovery of several dwelling sites in 1954 by the Danish expedition from the Moesgaard Museum soon discredited the very hazardous theory, suggested by the first excavators, of an exclusive island-necropolis where the populations of the neighbouring Arabian coast, and perhaps even from Sumer, would have come to bury their deceased.

Detailed typological studies undertaken in the last 50 years have identified several types of tumuli: Early and Late Type mounds, Burial Complexes, Chieftain Mounds, and Royal Mounds. The exterior aspect of these tumuli varies, but all are composed of a rectangular central chamber (or two superimposed chambers for the Chieftain and Royal Mounds, the highest monuments), designed to host a single individual placed in a flexed position. The burial chambers are generally oriented north-south, covered with large capstones and equipped with alcoves, and surrounded by a large ring wall, one to several metres high, which gave the whole construction the appearance of a small tower. The appearance of present-day stony rounded tumuli is due to their slow erosion and the looting of their exterior building stones for nearly 4,000 years. When they are intact, the burials yield funerary deposits associating pottery, soft stone and copper vessels with copper weapons and fineries. These burial offerings provide seminal information on the nature of Dilmun society and regional cultural and commercial interactions over about five centuries.

Middle Dilmun

At the end of the 18th century BCE, a crisis period struck the trading partners of Dilmun (collapse of the Indus civilization, significant economic decline of southern Mesopotamia, emergence of new commercial competitors), inevitably affecting Bahrain and the Dilmun royal authority. Today, archaeology perceives this period more as a phase of profound transformation than actual collapse, yet the structured state of Dilmun and its reigning dynasty gradually disappeared. However, Bahrain, which retained the name Dilmun, remained a strategic stake for Mesopotamian power. Colonized in the first half of the 15th century BC by the Kassite dynasty of Babylon, which sought to control lapis lazuli trade locally, the former capital of Bahrain and its harbour regained some activity, and housed a Babylonian governor and his administration. The latter notably restored the former palace of the kings of Dilmun, which yielded a precious archive of dated cuneiform documents, the southernmost evidence of such writing in the ancient Near East.

Outside Qalʿat al-Bahrain, the exact nature of the Kassite occupation of the island is still unclear, except that archaeology detects significant ideological changes in funerary traditions. Contrary to the earlier period when burial mounds were prepared for single individuals, new underground collective burials emerged in various areas. The increased use of mass graves could be linked to a need to reduce investment in resources due to economic stagnation. It might also reflect the adoption of Mesopotamian customs brought by the Kassites. We do not know how long this episode of Babylonian control and brief economic revival lasted. The departure of the Kassites, probably before the end of the 14th century BCE, resulted in the disappearance of Bahrain from the regional economy once again.

Late Dilmun

Following a rather long gap, pottery and soft stone vessels from the Late Dilmun cemeteries of al-Hajjar and al-Maqsha (cautiously dated between ca. 950 and 700 BCE), as well as pyramidal seals and some bronze daggers, undoubtedly indicate contacts with the Iron Age Oman Peninsula. The funerary traditions of Southeast Arabia (see Funerary practices (Southeast Arabia)) could have inspired some inhabitants of Dilmun at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. Still, we cannot exclude burials linked to a community of traders from the current Oman Peninsula.

The Late Dilmun sequence was mainly excavated and studied at Qalʿat al-Bahrain. Dense layers from this period confirm that Bahrain regained some prosperity, even though Iron Age Dilmun was no longer the major international crossroads it was at the beginning of the 2nd millennium. The Assyrian king Sargon II mentions on several occasions around 709 BCE, in his Khorsabad inscriptions, a king Uperi of Dilmun who, impressed by his omnipotence, would have sent him presents. Rather than a submission, it should be construed as the skilful diplomatic act of a still independent sovereign, whose residence was likely identified on the archaeological tell. It was later transformed into a larger building with a plan inspired by the luxurious Mesopotamian homes of the mid-1st millennium and probably associated with a temple where original sacrificial snake bowls were deposited. However, historical sources confirm that the Assyrian administration, then Neo-Babylonian (King Nabonidus mentions the presence of a bel-pihâti or resident governor in 544 BCE), and finally Achaemenid, quickly subjugated the successors of Uperi. A legal contract in Akkadian, discovered in 2016, is dated to the “18th year of Darius, king of Babylon and all the Lands”, corresponding to ca. 510 BCE. It contains the very last known mention of Dilmun.

Tylos

Around 325 BCE, the main island of Bahrain was approached by the maritime expedition entrusted by Alexander the Great to his admiral Androsthenes of Thasos, who wrote a now lost detailed environmental description. This vivid account was taken up by later Classical historians and botanists, such as Theophrastus or Pliny, who reported on the island’s luxuriant gardens, its abundant mangrove, and its pleasant climate.

Hereafter called “Tylos”, the former cultural centre of Dilmun then underwent an exceptional and prolonged phase of prosperity, first under the tutelage of the Seleucid Empire (3rd and 2nd centuries BCE), then from the 2nd century onwards under that of the kingdom of Characene, in the south of present-day Iraq. This new culture developed over nearly five centuries, primarily influenced by the Hellenistic, then the Partho-Sassanid world, and is almost exclusively known through the numerous necropolises discovered in the northern palm grove of Bahrain and by a so-far unique, poorly-preserved dwelling level at Qalʿat al-Bahrain. Most other Tylos settlements are probably situated below present-day villages in the northern and western sectors of Bahrain’s densely urbanized main island.

Unlike the Dilmun cemeteries, the numerous Tylos necropolises of the island are located on the edges of palm groves or sometimes within them, and are often remarkably preserved when they have escaped looting. They reflect a particular set of traditions mixing an insular, local cultural background with the Hellenistic influences observed elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. A Tylos necropolis usually comprises up to several hundred burials, organised concentrically around a central, more elaborately constructed “major” grave, where an ancestor or prominent member of the social or family group was probably initially buried. These mostly individual graves were covered with small sandy mounds which gradually merged to create a single sub-circular low hill, easily identifiable in the archaeological landscape of Bahrain. From the first century BCE onwards, the graves generally appear as rectangular stone-built plastered chambers, often more than one metre deep, closed by carefully sealed irregular stone slabs. They followed on from the more rudimentary cists in use in the 3rd/2nd centuries BCE. The bodies of the deceased, in a dorsal lying-down position, were often placed in wooden coffins, the traces of which are sometimes preserved. Unsurprisingly for a culture strongly influenced by the Hellenistic world, the burial deposit was intended to provide the deceased with the necessary equipment for a journey to the afterlife. This generally abundant and diversified equipment includes pottery, stone and metal containers for liquids and food, cosmetic instruments, glass flasks for ointments and perfumes, rich fineries, without forgetting the traditional silver obol placed in the mouth, intended to pay the “ferryman” towards the beyond.

In some cases, limestone stelae were placed near the graves. These figurative sculptures in low-relief or in the round aim to convey a form of identity on the deceased. Throughout the Tylos period (from ca. 250 BCE to 250 CE), these remarkable local artistic productions evolved stylistically from the simple evocation of a human silhouette (“nephesh-stelae”, sometimes bearing inscriptions in Greek) to lifelike funerary portraits, inspired by Parthian art, but possibly also Palmyrenian.

Around the turn of the era, the wealth of material associated with the Tylos burials illustrates the critical position of Bahrain within a new network of exchanges linking the Gulf not only to mainland Arabia, Mesopotamia, Iran and the Indian world (ceramics, semi-precious stones, gold, wood, iconographic traditions), but now also to Egypt and the Syro-Levantine coast (glassware).

Pierre Lombard

References and suggested readings

• Cotty M. & J. Cun 2022. De Dilmun à Tylos. Voyage archéologique au Royaume de Bahreïn. Paris, Manama: Musée du Louvre, Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities.
• Højlund, F. 2007. The burial mounds of Bahrain: social complexity in Early Dilmun (Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 58). Aarhus, Manama: Moesgaard Museum, Bahrain Ministry of Information, Aarhus University Press.
• Laursen, S.T. 2017. The Royal Mounds of A’ali in Bahrain. The Emergence of Kingship in Early Dilmun (Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 100). Højbjerg, Manama: Jutland Archaeological Society, Moesgaard Museum, Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities.
• Lombard, P. (ed.) 1999. Bahreïn, la civilisation des deux mers : de Dilmoun à Tylos. Paris, Gent: Institut du Monde Arabe, SDZ.
• Lombard P. & N. Boksmati-Fattouh 2014. Ancient Bahrain. The Power of Trade. Manama: Ministry of Culture. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02138774
• Lombard P., B. Chamel, J. Cuny, M. Cotty, F. Guermont, R. Lux, R. Noca 2020. Les fouilles françaises de Abu Saiba (Mont 1). Données nouvelles sur la phase Tylos de Bahreïn (c. 200 BC-AD 300). PSAS 50: 225-241. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02406075
• Salles J.-F. & A. Herling 1993. Hellenistic cemeteries in Bahrain, in U. Finkbeiner (ed.) Materialien zur Archäologie der Seleukiden- und Partherzeit im südlichen Babylonien und im Golfgebiet: 161–182. Tübingen: Wasmuth.
• Salman, M.I. & S.F. Andersen 2009. The Tylos period burials in Bahrain. Volume 2, The Hamad Town DS 3 and Shakhoura cemeteries. Manama: Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities.

_{Alternate spellings: Bahrain, Bahrayn, Dilmun, Tylos}