Archaeologists Begin Restoring Shamash Gate
Project aims to reverse ISIS damage at ancient Nineveh
Aerial shot of Nineveh’s Shamash Gate. Courtesy Timothy Harrison et al., “The Shamash Gate, Nineveh: A Window into Two Episodes of Instability,” Iraq (2026), CC-BY 4.0
The destruction of ancient cities is often softened into “history”—cataloged, photographed, and safely contained in the past. But a new study of Nineveh’s Shamash Gate in northern Iraq complicates that distance. There, arrowheads and burn layers from the city’s fall in 612 BCE coexist with the localized burning, impact damage, and tunnels carved by ISIS (also known as the Islamic State) during the battle for Mosul in 2017. These two destruction layers, so far removed in time, make it difficult to keep “then” and “now” separate.
The recent work at the Shamash Gate participates in what archaeologists consider “salvage excavation.” Initiated in the aftermath of the destruction of Mosul, the project found that the core of the gate still survives despite decades of erosion, earlier reconstruction complications, tunneling by ISIS, and the damage of recent warfare. The team suggests that the monument now requires a carefully coordinated program of excavation, conservation, and restoration. Part of that work has already begun through collaborations aimed at stabilizing the structure by backfilling the tunnels. In a striking reversal, excavators are filling the tunnels with sandbags containing the very soil originally removed by ISIS.
Tunnel dug by ISIS under Nineveh’s Shamash Gate. Courtesy Timothy Harrison et al., “The Shamash Gate, Nineveh: A Window into Two Episodes of Instability,” Iraq (2026), CC-BY 4.0.
Nineveh was one of the great cities of the ancient Near East and the imperial capital of the Assyrian Empire at its height in the seventh century BCE. Situated along the Tigris River near modern Mosul, the city was massively expanded by Sennacherib, who enclosed it within monumental stone walls containing grand gates such as the Shamash Gate. Nineveh became a center of royal power, administration, and monumental art, famous for its palaces, relief sculptures, and the royal library assembled under Ashurbanipal.
The archaeologists discuss the development of the Shamash Gate under two major Assyrian rulers: Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal. Under Sennacherib (r. 705–681 BCE), the gate was constructed as part of a vast expansion of Nineveh. The team describes it as a “main artery” into the city. Indeed, the stone-paved passageways still preserve deep wheel grooves from the heavy traffic that once passed through the gate.
Later modifications, likely undertaken during Ashurbanipal’s reign (669–631 BCE), point to continued investment in the structure, for example improving drainage. The most striking evidence from this later phase is a large limestone stela, recovered in nearly 200 fragments from the central passageway. The monument depicts the king and is inscribed with royal texts, but appears to have been deliberately shattered and burned. Its fragments were embedded within a destruction layer filled with arrowheads, collapsed masonry, and disarticulated human remains. This layer preserves the violent fall of Nineveh to the Medes and Babylonians in 612 BCE, and with it the collapse of the Assyrian Empire.
The same gate bears equally stark evidence from the occupation of Mosul by ISIS from 2014 to 2017. In this time, the Shamash Gate was transformed into a defensive structure. A network of tunnels was cut through and beneath the gate to move people and ammunition, compromising its foundations. Also, parts of its stone reliefs and architectural elements were deliberately damaged or destroyed. The area outside the gate became militarized and littered with debris. Subsequent fighting left behind shrapnel, craters, and burn marks. These developments threatened the gate’s structural stability and inscribed a modern layer of conflict into the ancient monument.
Nineveh is overtly mentioned in the Bible. In the book of Jonah, it is depicted as a sprawling city called to repentance. Its violence and moral corruption provoke divine warning that its inhabitants ultimately heed (Jonah 1:2; 3:2–10). In later biblical literature, Nineveh becomes a symbol of imperial arrogance and collapse. The book of Nahum celebrates the city’s destruction (Nahum 1:1; 3:1–7) and the book of Zephaniah imagines it reduced to desolation (Zephaniah 2:13–15).
These texts emerged in the shadow of the Assyrian Empire, whose kings—including Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal—factor heavily into the biblical narrative through military campaigns and political domination of the Levant. Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem during the reign of King Hezekiah, described in 2 Kings, Isaiah, and 2 Chronicles, forms one of the clearest historical intersections between Assyrian imperial records and the Hebrew Bible. The excavations at the Shamash Gate illuminate the history of an ancient city at they same time that they uncover the material setting of figures, events, and empires that profoundly shaped the Bible.
Separated by millennia, the past at Mosul accumulates, reappears, and mirrors the present in uncomfortable ways. When framed as “part of history” or “the workings of empire,” violence can feel like something that just “happens.” But once we start thinking like that, we can never really put the sand back in the tunnels.
Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.
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