Asia

The monumental Shamash Gate, one of the most important eastern entrances to the ancient city of Nineveh, has yielded a secret that remained buried for millennia: beneath its foundations lie traces of two episodes of catastrophic destruction separated by more than 2,600 years. On one hand, the remains of the bloody fall of Nineveh to a coalition of Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC. On the other, the scars of Mosul's liberation from the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2017. What makes the find all the more remarkable is that a shattered stele of King Ashurbanipal — the last great ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire — was recovered from the very same destruction layer. This striking evidence comes from a scientific