HIGH on a hillside, above the derelict remains of Tushpa is a plaque commemorating the Persian king Xerxes who passed that way en route to his failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. It is written in the wedge-shaped cuneiform script invented here and used throughout the Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires. On the hilltop stands a ruined castle originating in the ninth century BC and added to by Ottoman and Armenian architects.
Tushpa, capital of the Urartian Empire, is said to ...