Ancient dice discovered in Bahrain may have been used for fortune telling

Bahrain has discovered a pair of ancient dice, considered to be the first ever found in the county and probably used for gaming or fortune telling rituals, authorities said on Tuesday.

The dice were found during an archaeological excavation at Abu Saiba, a village in the northern part of the country.

“Many details are not known about the story of the dice’s origin, but it is considered the first dice discovered in Bahrain. It was part of a game or ritual of fortune-tellers,” the director of the department of antiquities and museums, Salman Al Mahari, told Al Arabiya TV.

“What looks like a hill cemetery was found dating back to the middle Tylos period (50 BC to 150 AD), with a maximum diameter of 70 metres, and a height between 4 and 4.5 metres,” Mr Al Mahari said.

Tylos is what the Greeks called Bahrain, which was a centre of pearl trading.

The department has been working on the site since 2017. It has conducted digs of a third of the total area of the hill, finding 93 burial sites.

This year, 23 new tombs were discovered and 11 were fully excavated.

Of those excavated, three were intact. The others had been looted, their contents stolen. Experts said they have provided interesting archaeological and anthropological material for the government.

“The main objective of excavating the Abu Saiba site is to study the culture of the people of Bahrain during the Tylos period to obtain accurate information about their funeral rituals, culture and trade relations,” archaeologist Julien Cooney said.

The burial sites provide information on the age, sex and health of those buried, he said.

In 2019, the Unesco World Heritage Committee voted to add Bahrain’s Dilmun Burial Mounds to the World Heritage List.

The landmark comprises 21 archaeological sites, in the western part of the island. They were built between 2050 BC and 1750 BC.

It provides evidence of the Early Dilmun civilisation, in about the second millennium BC, when Bahrain became a trade hub.

The island has one of the largest-known prehistoric cemeteries in the world.

Notable salonnières of the Middle East through history

Al Khasan (Okaz, Saudi Arabia)

Tamadir bint Amr Al Harith, known simply as Al Khasan, was a poet from Najd famed for elegies, earning great renown for the eulogy of her brothers Mu’awiyah and Sakhr, both killed in tribal wars. Although not a salonnière, this prestigious 7th century poet fostered a culture of literary criticism and could be found standing in the souq of Okaz and reciting her poetry, publicly pronouncing her views and inviting others to join in the debate on scholarship. She later converted to Islam.

Maryana Marrash (Aleppo)

A poet and writer, Marrash helped revive the tradition of the salon and was an active part of the Nadha movement, or Arab Renaissance. Born to an established family in Aleppo in Ottoman Syria in 1848, Marrash was educated at missionary schools in Aleppo and Beirut at a time when many women did not receive an education. After touring Europe, she began to host salons where writers played chess and cards, competed in the art of poetry, and discussed literature and politics. An accomplished singer and canon player, music and dancing were a part of these evenings.

Princess Nazil Fadil (Cairo)

Princess Nazil Fadil gathered religious, literary and political elite together at her Cairo palace, although she stopped short of inviting women. The princess, a niece of Khedive Ismail, believed that Egypt’s situation could only be solved through education and she donated her own property to help fund the first modern Egyptian University in Cairo.

Mayy Ziyadah (Cairo)

Ziyadah was the first to entertain both men and women at her Cairo salon, founded in 1913. The writer, poet, public speaker and critic, her writing explored language, religious identity, language, nationalism and hierarchy. Born in Nazareth, Palestine, to a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother, her salon was open to different social classes and earned comparisons with souq of where Al Khansa herself once recited.