A day in Bahrain Part 1: Burial mounds and the female figure

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Good afternoon beautiful people!

Where did you all go for Eid break? I stayed in Saudi like all the cool kids, but I was able to go to Bahrain for some site seeing. Site seeing in Bahrain?! Yes, it is possible.
Now I have gone before to places like the Al-Areen Wildlife Park and didn't have the car to see the Tree of Life, so I hit up the Bahrain National Museum, Al Riwaq Art Space and the Al Fateh Grand Mosque.

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Above is a photo of the entrance to the museum. Beside it is a wide space with many statues. I love that so many of them represent the female figure.

This statue almost looks like Madonna with her child.

The layout of the museum allows visitors to walk through the history of the island and its people. What I found most interesting were the recreations of the burial mounds, where locals buried their dead along with jewelry and pottery. This is a unique and important aspect of Bahraini history as the mounds and their artifacts tell us about prehistoric societies, ones that are widely considered unimportant amongst many religious hardliners as they predate Islam. The burial sites are very rare and at their peak they numbered 76,000. They are also under threat from the expanding developments across the country.

There was also a hall devoted to Islamic texts, that held copies of the Quran with gorgeous covers and decorations on the inside pages.

The coins below come from the ancient society of Dilmun, considered holy land by the Sumerians. Many people know the Epic of Gilgamesh, but they don't know that Dilmun was included in this story and described as a paradise garden. The depictions of animals, people and scenes from everyday life are also very telling for historians, as we now know what these ancient people considered important and noteworthy.

Can you tell I'm a history buff? Very cool stuff! For those of you interested in art, there is also a gallery inside the museum featuring modern pieces of artwork.

This haunting piece labelled The Womb, is by Jordanian artist Juman Al Nimri.

These following photographs were part of a series aimed at portraying Bahrain through the eyes of different artists living in or from the country. I really like the first photograph because it depicts migrant workers living and working in Bahrain, a severely underrepresented segment of the population.

Recognize the burial mound? Can you believe that people live so close to it?

After the museum I decided to check out Al Riwaq Art Space, so if you enjoyed my post on Acoustic Cafe and/or are interested in art in Bahrain in general, then stay tuned for part 2 of my Bahrain series!