Archaeological Sites of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn

Five thousand years ago, communities in the interior of Oman raised stone towers and buried their dead in beehive tombs whose silhouettes still crown the ridgelines. Together, Bat — beside its palm grove — and neighbouring Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn preserve the world's most complete grouping of 3rd-millennium BC settlements and necropolises. UNESCO inscribed the ensemble in 1988; the tombs at Al-Ayn are especially photogenic at sunset.