An overview of eastern Nineveh

The Nineveh East Project, a collaboration between the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC), University of Chicago, focuses on assessing damage, restoration, and scientific excavations at Nineveh following extensive destruction during ISIS’s occupation of Mosul (2014-2017). Efforts are centered on eastern Nineveh, which includes the city’s expansion under King Sennacherib (705-681 BCE). The project began work at the Shamash Gate in 2020 under the Joint Iraqi-Italian Expedition to Nineveh. One of the largest gates along Nineveh’s eastern wall, the Shamash Gate sustained severe damage due to tunneling by ISIS, which destabilized its structure. While the core structure of the gate remained largely intact, ISIS tunneling within the gate has led to its destabilization.

Between 2021-2024, operations that encompassed stabilization, excavation, and restoration took placed led by Dr. Timothy Harrison and field director Dr. Khaled Abu Jayyab. The primary objectives included stabilizing the gate by reinforcing and filling the tunnels, the systematic removal of debris from the 612 BCE destruction of Nineveh, and the delineation of tower chambers within the gate. Starting in 2025, work will expand across eastern Nineveh to investigate post-Sennacherib urban development while continuing restoration efforts. This new phase includes collaboration with the local municipality to develop public spaces, reinforcing Nineveh’s significance as a landmark in East Mosul. Additionally, these efforts aim to support tourism infrastructure by integrating archaeological heritage into the city’s cultural and economic future.

The Promontory Palace, first identified by Ehud Netzer as that of Herod the Great, is built out into the Mediterranean Sea, just west of the theater in the SE area of Caesarea Maritima. Initially, the lower palace was constructed for Herod to plan and supervise the great harbor, and the palace was extended later in his reign to provide reception space for guests at spectacles and official functions. On his death, the palace served as the official praetorium of his heirs and subsequent Roman officials for centuries. Lower Promontory Excavations in the 1970s by Netzer and Lee I. Levine in the lower area of the palace revealed a series of luxurious reception rooms and heated chambers centering on a large (35 x 18 m.) rock-cut swimming pool enclosed by a colonnade. Cuttings in the bedrock between the columns suggested to Netzer that planters had been built between the columns, offering a pluteus around the pool, as well as the effect of a garden for swimmers in the pool. The Upper Palace Excavations were undertaken by K. Gleason and B. Burrell for the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1990-1996), in collaboration with Netzer and Hebrew University.

The project is now in the final stages of publication by Burrell and Gleason for the University of Cincinnati and Cornell University, respectively, together with Lisa Kahn, co-editing the Finds Volume. Although the building was thoroughly looted over the centuries, the project is providing an exceptional insight into the transition of an official residence from Hellenistic basilaea to Roman praetorium in terms of architecture and material culture. The project has also made contributions to the environmental archaeology of maritime villas, to the study of ceramic building materials, to the corpus of defixiones (curse tablets). The publication will comprise two volumes and an open access database of the excavation’s stratigraphy and finds.