As-salāmu ʿalaykum - 2,000-Year-Old Tomb Found Beneath Al Ain Museum Changes Our View of Pre-Islamic Life
As-salāmu ʿalaykum. When renovation work started at Al Ain Museum in 2018, the team expected to restore the building - not discover a whole new chapter of local history. As the oldest museum in the area was taken apart for repair, workers uncovered something much older under its foundations: a tomb about 2,000 years old, and evidence that reshapes how we see life here before Islam.
“We had no real evidence for the pre-Islamic period in Al Ain - this is the first,” says Peter Sheehan, senior archaeologist at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi. The finds show Iron Age farming was far more extensive than anyone thought. Imagine a year-round water supply and the beginnings of an oasis landscape.
The find was so important it paused the construction for over a year. Beneath the museum wasn’t just one grave but a whole cemetery. “We found the main tomb first,” Sheehan explains. “Around it were individual graves, likely satellite burials. Then, 500 metres east, more intact pre-Islamic graves with items inside. That points to at least a 500-metre-wide cemetery and thus a sizeable settlement.”
This changes the old idea that the area was sparsely populated. A cemetery of that scale suggests a decent local community lived nearby two millennia ago. Before this, the centuries between the Iron Age and the rise of Islam were a blank spot for Al Ain. These graves fill part of that blank with the first tangible proof of a thriving settlement.
Sheehan’s team also worked near the UAE–Oman border fence and found similar remains. Both projects point to large-scale Iron Age agriculture in Al Ain - bigger than the oases we see today. It shows Al Ain wasn’t marginal back then; it was one of the agricultural heartlands of its time.
The archaeologists noticed a move from shallow irrigation channels to deep falaj systems tapping groundwater. Tapping deep water allows continuous supply year-round, which helps create an oasis. Among the finds were fragments that look like Alexandrian glass, suggesting trade links. The material record also shows technological change - iron tools and weapons appear, replacing earlier materials.
Grave goods give clues about daily life. Personal adornments and perfume jars point to female burials, while tools, ladles and sieves linked to date-wine production suggest male burials. Around the site investigators found broken wine amphorae tossed into old wells - signs of feasting tied to burials. That points to social practices where the living took part in ceremonies connected with the dead.
A couple of items bear faint marks that look South Arabian - perhaps a wasm, a sort of tribal or familial stamp used on camels. The graves themselves resemble later Muslim burial styles in having a shaft and a small niche for the body; the main difference is the earlier graves were oriented randomly rather than towards Makkah. That continuity hints at a culture in transition toward forms more familiar in the Islamic period.
Overall, the discoveries suggest smaller, organised oasis communities each with its identity. In some periods Al Ain shows a major peak of activity (the Iron Age), then a drop - possibly from climate change or water shortage - then later revivals tied to wider regional trade and politics. For example, in the early Islamic era around 880, trading expansion increased demand for food from inland oases, prompting renewed agriculture. Then around the 13th century activity falls again, and later revives under the Omani Empire in the 17th century, which developed date production for export.
Each rise and fall left traces. When water was scarce populations shrank; when trade or political changes drove demand, agriculture and settlements expanded. This tomb and cemetery fill in one of those previously missing peaks, showing Al Ain stayed active longer than scholars had thought. As Sheehan puts it, “Five years ago we thought nothing happened here. But it was right under our museum.”
The site lies beside the ancient Al Ain oasis, whose date palms are still cultivated today. That a pre-Islamic cemetery sits under the museum reminds us much of ancient Al Ain survives beneath the modern city. The Department of Culture and Tourism has included these findings in the museum redesign by Dabbagh Architects, with sections of glass flooring so visitors can see excavated remains - the museum becomes both gallery and live dig site.
“Archaeology is always a work in progress,” Sheehan says. Each project adds a small piece to a larger picture. What the team has found so far is transformative: graves that show a connected civilisation trading with distant regions, adopting new technologies, and shaping a landscape that still defines Al Ain today.
May Allah bless those who work to uncover and preserve our shared heritage.
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