Archaeology in Mosul, October 2024: Excavations at Nineveh and Surveying Tell Arne
After exploring some of southern Iraq, in October Rasha and I met up with our archaeologist friend from University of Toronto, Dr. Khaled Jayyab, in Mosul, Iraq. Mosul city sits atop the ancient city of Nineveh, once the largest city in the world during the rule of Neo-Assyrian kind Sennacherib, ~700-680 BCE. Sennacherib constructed a monumental wall around Nineveh, the remains of which surround a large part of the Mosul city on the ‘Left Bank’ of the Tigris River. Jayyab and his team were excavating one of several gates through the wall into Nineveh, the Shamash Gate (named after the Assyrian sun god). Here we were working to clear the gate passageway as well as the rooms on either side of 2000+ years of mudbrick rubble to expose the area and open it up for restoration as an archaeological exhibit for Moslawis and visitors to Mosul. During excavations we recovered not only direct evidence of a final battle that led to the capture and destruction of Nineveh in 680 BCE, but also the remains of munitions and tunnels carved into the walls by ISIS (Da’esh) when they had captured Mosul from 2014-2017 and used these ancient fortifications as their own.
In addition to excavating Shamash Gate, we also joined Khaled for a survey of Chalcolithic Period tell sites that are today located within the expanding peripheral slums of Mosul. We largely focused on documenting and collecting artifacts from around one site, Tell Arne, located in the middle of a garbage dump controlled by a powerful Shi’a Militia with whom we had to negotiate and work alongside. Needless to say, research in Mosul comes with a lot of extra layers and considerations compared to your average archaeological expedition.
