Shams Gate

Bab Shams (the Gate of the Sun goddess), or the Shams Gateway, is one of the archaeological gates in the city of Mosul in Nineveh Governorate, considered one of the most prominent surviving remnants of the ancient wall of Nineveh, that great wall the Assyrians built around 700 BC to protect the capital of their empire.

This wall extends approximately twelve kilometers in length, consisting of a carved stone wall six meters high followed by a mud brick wall ten meters high and fifteen meters thick, with stone towers distributed at regular intervals. The city of Nineveh once contained fifteen entry and exit gates, of which scholars have been able to identify five.

Bab Shams was named after the goddess Shamash (the sun deity), and is located on the road leading to Erbil Governorate. It is considered one of the important gates of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with an entrance width of two meters, and was restored by the Iraqi government in 1960.

As part of preserving this archaeological heritage, the "Sawa'id Mawsiliyya" (Mosul Arms) team organized a campaign to clean and illuminate the Shams Gate, calling it "Our Heritage is Our Identity." They worked to remove approximately 1,800 tons of waste and rubble extending along the length of the wall and around Bab Shams, in cooperation between the city municipality, the Nineveh Electricity Distribution Directorate, and the Governorate's Heritage and Antiquities Inspectorate, with support and funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and under the supervision of an archaeological expert to ensure the gate suffered no damage, with the aim of revealing the city's beauty and ancient history and preserving the Mosul archaeological identity.