HILI ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK

A bit isolated from other cultural sites; archaeology enthusiasts will love it. The park houses part of a necropolis of twelve tombs dating from the Bronze Age (2500-2000 BC), namely the remains of two towers and two tombs. The rest is not open to the public. At that time, the villagers built houses in mud and buried their dead in common, circular tombs built in stone.

Hili 1: ancient circular tower of several meters high. The walls, nearly 3 meters thick, made of mud, housed several rooms and in their center a well. They have disappeared and only the foundations remain.

Hili 10: this site is located near the entrance of the park. A well was also discovered in the center of the ruins. A third building located to the southwest outside the garden was discovered by a French team.

The superb tomb of Hili: a small circular necropolis that contained several hundred bodies whose skeletons cannot be found. Used over a period of two to three hundred years, it has two entrances. The northern entrance is decorated with three scenes, barely visible. The first just above the opening depicts a man riding an animal while other companions follow on foot. To the right, two individuals are embracing. Finally, at the bottom of the opening, two animals, probably leopards, can be seen devouring an oryx or gazelle. The southern doorway is decorated with two oryx facing each other. Originally, the openings were blocked by stones that could be moved.

Tomb N: Very close to the large tomb, this is a new circular tomb, which contains six chambers. Archaeologists found 110,000 human bones belonging to more than seven hundred bodies including men, women and children of all ages who also died over two centuries. The research found that most had died of natural causes between their twenties and thirties, but others were much older as well. Archaeologists believe that the bones from the large tomb would have been moved here. A large number of objects including ceramics from Pakistan, Afghanistan, local pottery, ornaments, stone vessels make this tomb a remarkable site.

The Neolithic garden has been on the Unesco World Heritage list since 2011.