Šamaš Gate

References in scholarly literature to the excavation of the Halzi Gate are included in this resource as the gate in question — the one that is about 400 m north of the southeast corner of Nineveh — is more likely to have been Šamaš Gate. For scholarly literature recording details of the excavations of the Šamaš Gate, see the reference section of the Mullissu Gate resource. The southernmost gate of Nineveh’s eastern wall was excavated in 1966-67 and 1989-90. Julian Reade has proposed referring to this gate as the Enlil Gate in order to avoid confusion with the reconstructed Šamaš Gate (= Mullissu Gate) located about 1,200 m north of this gate.

The gate is mentioned in Akkadian inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib dating to 697-691 B.C. Most of Sennacherib’s inscriptions record that the Šamaš Gate was the fourth of the south- and east-facing gates. One inscription, however, states that it was the third of those gates. A text dating to the reign Sennacherib’s grandson Ashurbanipal calls it the abul Igīgī ša Šamaš ("Igīgū-god Gate of Šamaš").

The gate’s exact position is uncertain and cannot be confirmed from in-situ inscriptions. Most scholarly reconstructions place the Šamaš Gate about 1,600 m north of the southeast corner of Nineveh (approximate coordinates: 36.3506849, 43.1754063). Following Julian Reade’s recent reassessment of the locations of the gates of Nineveh (SAAB 22 [2016], 39-93), it is more likely that Sennacherib had this gate constructed about 1,200 m south of its traditional proposed location. Therefore, the Šamaš Gate, and not the Halzi Gate, was probably the southernmost of Nineveh’s east-facing gates. The gate reconstructed just north of the Erbil road and commonly referred to as the Šamaš Gate should now be regarded as the Mullissu Gate.