The Handwriting on the Wall Says "Iran"

By Gary Leupp
Created Jan 17 2007 - 9:00am

In the Bible story, the Babylonian king Belshazzar is feasting with his
courtiers at a banquet, using the sacred golden goblets plundered from
Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem as wine cups. Suddenly, out of nowhere a hand
appears; it writes a cryptic message on the chamber wall. The king's
counselors are unable to decipher it, so Daniel is called in to interpret
its meaning. (Daniel is a Jew of the exile and a very wise man. Many years
ago he had interpreted the dreams of the king's father Nebuchadnezzar.)

The handwriting on the wall, Daniel tells King Belshazzar, consists of the
Aramaic words mene mene tekel upharsin (literally "numbered, numbered,
weighed, divided"), a message which decoded means: "God has numbered the
days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the
scales and found wanting; your kingdom is divided . . . " The last word
upharsin sounds like "Persia" in Aramaic, so Daniel adds that the divided
kingdom of Babylonia will be "given to the Medes and Persians" (New Oxford
Annotated Bible translation). It's among the most famous Bible puns.