Case file · High strangeness
The writing on the wall
Daniel 5 tells how a hand wrote 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' on the palace wall during Belshazzar's feast in Babylon, on the night the city fell to Persia in 539 BC.
539 BCE · 32.54, 44.42 · status: legend
The account
Belshazzar was a real person, son of Nabonidus and regent in Babylon, though the Bible calls him king. The phrase 'the writing on the wall' entered many languages.
The sceptical view
The Book of Daniel is generally dated by scholars to the 2nd century BC, long after the events; Babylonian sources describe the city's fall without any prodigy.