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Gary Manners, April 30/ 2026

The monumental Shamash Gate, one of the most important eastern entrances to the ancient city of Nineveh, has yielded a secret that remained buried for millennia: beneath its foundations lie traces of two episodes of catastrophic destruction separated by more than 2,600 years. On one hand, the remains of the bloody fall of Nineveh to a coalition of Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC. On the other, the scars of Mosul's liberation from the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2017. What makes the find all the more remarkable is that a shattered stele of King Ashurbanipal — the last great ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire — was recovered from the very same destruction layer.

This striking evidence comes from a scientific study published in the journal Iraq, detailing the results of three excavation seasons conducted between 2021 and 2023 by a team led by Timothy Harrison of the University of Chicago, as part of the Iraqi-Italian Nineveh Expedition. The project not only documented extensive ISIS damage and stabilized a dangerous tunnel network but also uncovered poignant physical traces of the city's violent final hours as the heart of the ancient world's most powerful empire.

A Gate Built for Empire

The Shamash Gate was one of eighteen gates that controlled access to Nineveh, the great capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, situated on the eastern bank of the Tigris River near modern Mosul. According to the study, its construction was part of a massive urban expansion carried out under King Sennacherib, who ruled from 705 to 681 BC. The gate stood on the eastern approach to the city, along the road connecting Erbil and Nineveh, and served as a vital artery of the empire. Cart-wheel grooves preserved on the stone pavement speak to the volume of heavy traffic that once flowed through this entrance.

Excavations in the central passageway revealed two distinct phases of paving. The earlier surface consisted of large stone slabs, probably connected with Sennacherib's original construction. A later resurfacing, possibly from the reign of King Ashurbanipal, used layers of mudbrick, fine pebbles, clay, and broken baked brick to level and improve the passage. But above this second floor, archaeologists found destruction deposits dating to the late seventh century BC — the period of Nineveh's fall. Then came fire.

The Shattered Stele of Ashurbanipal

Among the most significant finds in the destruction deposits was a highly fragmented limestone stele connected to King Ashurbanipal, the last great ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Archaeologists have recovered 196 fragments so far. The original monument was at least 2 meters high, 80 to 100 centimeters wide, and about 26 centimeters thick. One face appears to have depicted a standing royal figure, likely Ashurbanipal himself, while the other bore a cuneiform inscription.

The preserved cuneiform text duplicates known royal inscriptions, including passages about the Assyrian campaign in Egypt, the defeat of Pharaoh Taharqa, and the fate of rebellious vassal kings. Its shattered condition, with many small chips and flakes, suggests intentional and violent destruction, presumably during the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. Traces of heat and burned organic material indicate that fire played a role in damaging or breaking the stone. For Assyriologists, the stele is valuable because it anchors royal ideology, imperial memory, and the archaeological destruction of the gate in the same context.

Human Remains: Voices of the Massacre

Alongside the stele, archaeologists found human remains that give rare physical texture to the violent end of Nineveh. In one area, researchers identified bones belonging to at least four individuals: a child around 2.5 to 3 years old, an adolescent male aged 18 to 20, an adult woman between 20 and 30 years old, and another adult of undetermined sex and age. The bones appeared mixed and completely disarticulated, consistent with the chaos of a violent sack. Another partially articulated adult skeleton was found just inside the gate, lying face down on a clay surface, with no skull and a highly fragmented jaw covered by a brick.

The pottery recovered from the same deposits confirms the dating. Archaeologists recovered 87 diagnostic ceramic fragments, mostly vessel rims, whose shapes match almost exactly those from the Mashki Gate, another Nineveh gate excavated in 1989 and 1990. Most pieces are yellow-green in color, a typically Neo-Assyrian hue, with a few fragments from the Middle Bronze Age and early Islamic periods also present.

ISIS Tunnels and the Second Catastrophe

The second catastrophe to strike the Shamash Gate came in the twenty-first century. During ISIS control of Mosul between 2014 and 2017, the group turned the gate into a defensive position, digging approximately 210 meters of tunnels inside and beneath the ancient structure. These tunnels cut through ancient stone and brick, damaged inscribed orthostats, and in some places ran directly beneath the foundations, posing a serious risk of collapse. A 2021 survey using 3D laser scanning revealed the full extent of the threat. The gate also bore traces of the battle for Mosul itself, including shrapnel, shell damage, craters, burn marks, and the remains of exploded grenades.

Fortunately, following consultations, the United Nations Development Program helped stabilize the tunnels in 2022, backfilling them with sandbags containing the same soil ISIS had originally excavated. The researchers also discovered that ISIS members had used the area immediately in front of the gate as a collection point for household items looted from the city — washing machines, air conditioning units, and furniture — stretching for about two kilometers along the outer face of the ancient city walls.

The Shamash Gate now stands as something more than an Assyrian ruin. It is a monument where ancient imperial collapse and modern urban trauma meet in the same archaeological record. The study's authors argue that the site now needs a carefully planned program of excavation, conservation, and restoration, noting that "the cultural and historical importance of the Shamash Gate as a unifying symbol of Mosul's remarkable cultural legacy and its revival after the recent conflict adds greater significance to this endeavor." Few sites make history feel so compressed: at this gate, arrowheads from 612 BC and ISIS tunnels from 2017 sit within the same wounded monument.

Top image: Aerial Photo of the Shamash Gate from the east.  Source: T. Harrison et al. 2026/Iraq

Details of pavement types at the gate. (T. Harrison et al. 2026/Iraq)

Finds in Operation 1: Top: arrowheads; bottom: stele fragments (T. Harrison et al. 2026/Iraq)

Photo of ISIS tunnel. (T. Harrison et al. 2026/Iraq)