As we ourselves, during the course of our excavations, brought to light objects of distinctly Phœnician origin, there would appear to be no longer any room for doubt that the mounds which lay before us were a vast necropolis of this mercantile race. If so, one of two suppositions must be correct, either firstly, that the Phœnicians originally lived here before they migrated to the Mediterranean, and that this was the land of Punt from which the Puni got their name, a land of palms like the Syrian coast from which the race got their distorted Greek appellation of Phœnicians; or secondly, that these islands were looked upon by them as a sacred spot for the burial of their dead, as the Hindoo looks upon the Ganges, and the Persian regards the shrines of Kerbela and Meshed. I am much more inclined to the former supposition, judging from the mercantile importance of the Bahrein Islands and the excellent school they must have been for a race which was to penetrate to all the then known corners of the globe—to brave the dangers of the open Atlantic, and to reach the shores of Britain in their trading ventures; and if nomenclature goes for anything, the name of Tyros and the still-existing name of Arad ought to confirm us in our belief and make certainty more certain.
Our camp was pitched on this desert among the tumuli. The ground was hard and rough, covered with very sharp stones; though dry, it sounded hollow, and it seemed as though there were water under it.
Our own tent occupied a conspicuous and central place; our servants' tent was hard by, liable to be blown down by heavy gusts of wind, which event happened the first night after our arrival, to the infinite discomfiture of the bazaar-master, who, by the way, had left his grand clothes at home, and appeared in the desert clad in a loose coffee-coloured dressing-gown, with a red band round his waist. Around the tents swarmed turbaned diggers, who looked as if they had come out in their night-gowns, dressing-gowns, and bath-sheets. These lodged at night in the bamboo village of Ali hard by, a place for which we developed the profoundest contempt, for the women thereof refused to pollute themselves by washing the clothes of infidels, and our garments had to be sent all the way to Manamah to be cleansed. A bamboo structure formed a shelter for the kitchen, around which, on the sand, lay curious coffee-pots, bowls, and cooking utensils, which would have been eagerly sought after for museums in Europe. The camel, which fetched the daily supply of water from afar, grazed around on the coarse desert herbage; the large white donkey which went into the town for marketing by day, and entangled himself in the tent ropes by night, was also left to wander at his own sweet will. This desert camp was evidently considered a very peculiar sight indeed, and no wonder that for the first week of our residence there, we were visited by all the inhabitants of Bahrein who could find time to come so far.
It was very weird to sit in our tent door the first evening and look at the great mound we were going to dig into next morning, and think how long it had stood there in the peace its builders hoped for it. There seemed to be quite a mournful feeling about disturbing it; but archæologists are a ruthless body, and this was to be the last night it would ever stand in its perfect shape. After all, we were full of hope of finding out the mystery of its origin.
The first attack next morning was most amusing to behold. My husband headed the party, looking very tall and slim, with his legs outlined against the sky, as he, with all the rest, in single file and in fluttering array, wound first round the mound to look for a good place to ascend, and then went straight up.
They were all amazed when I appeared and gave orders to the division under my command.
They looked very questioningly indeed, but, as the Persians had learnt to respect me, the Bahreini became quite amenable.
Theodore Bent Receiving Visitors at The Mounds, Bahrein
The dimensions of the mound on which we began our labours were as follows: 35 feet in height, 76 feet in diameter, and 152 paces in circumference. We chose this in preference to the higher mounds, the tops of which were flattened somewhat and suggested the idea that they had fallen in. Ours, on the contrary, was quite rounded on the summit, and gave every hope that in digging through it we should find whatever was inside in statu quo. At a distance of several feet from most of the mounds are traces of an outer encircling wall or bank of earth, similar to walls found around certain tombs in Lydia, as also round a tumulus at Tara in Ireland, and this encircling wall was more marked around some of the smaller and presumably more recent tombs at the outer edge of the necropolis; in some cases several mounds would appear to have been clustered together, and to have had an encircling wall common to them all.
