Cultural depictions of Belshazzar


Belshazzar, son of the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, Nabonidus, has inspired many works of art and cultural allusions, often with a religious motif. While a historical figure, depictions and portrayals of him are most often based on his appearance in the biblical story of Belshazzar's feast in the Book of Daniel. This story is the origin of the idiomatic expression "the writing is on the wall".

The writing is on the wall

In chapter 5 in the Book of Daniel, a hand writes Hebrew letters on a wall, which Daniel interprets as "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin". These words mean that Belshazzar is doomed. The phrase "The writing is on the wall", or "The writing on the wall", has become an idiomatic expression referring to the foreshadowing of any impending doom, misfortune, or end. If "the writing is on the wall" something bad is about to happen. A person who does not or refuses to see "the writing on the wall" is being described as ignorant to the signs of a cataclysmic event that will likely occur in the near future.
One of the earliest known uses of the phrase in English is in the writings of a Captain L. Brinckmair in 1638, during the Thirty Years' War. Brinckmair writes: "Remarkable Prodigies..are in themselves like the writing on the Wall in Beshazzars Palace, which Sooth-sayers, Astrologians, and Chaldeans could neither understand nor reade’."
Shortly before midnight on 21 April 1947, Meir Feinstein or Moshe Barazani wrote "Mene! Mene! Tekel Upharsin!" on the walls of their shared death row cell in Jerusalem Central Prison in British-controlled Palestine, shortly before they then blew themselves to pieces. Their deaths are also commonly associated with another Bible quote – – the words of Samson from Judges 16:30.

Music

Theatre and literature

  • The fourteenth-century poem Cleanness by the Pearl Poet recounts the feast and subsequent events as a warning against spiritual impurity.
  • In William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia disguises herself as a lawyer's apprentice and calls herself Balthazar, alluding to the Biblical Belshazzar.Belshazzar's Feast, an auto sacramental by Pedro Calderon de la Barca.
  • In 1720 Jonathan Swift wrote "'Tis like the writing on the wall" in the poem "The Run Upon the Bankers", using the idiom.
  • Lord Byron's poem "Vision of Belshazzar" from Hebrew Melodies includes both the feast and Daniel's pronunciation.
  • The poem Belsatzar or Belsazar by Heinrich Heine is based on the feast. It appears in the collection Buch der Lieder.
  • "Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" and Belshazzar is mentioned in Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo in connection with Gérard de Villefort having one of his long past crimes come to light.
  • In chapter 99 of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, the first mate Starbuck murmur to himself "The old man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing" as he spies Captain Ahab speaking to the doubloon he had nailed to the mast of the Pequod.
  • Emily Dickinson's poem "Belshazzar had a letter" from The Poems of Emily Dickinson is about Belshazzar's divine correspondence. Her poem was written in 1879.
  • In the novel Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser entitles a chapter "The Feast of Belshazar – A Seer to Translate" in which the gluttony of turn-of-the-century New York City is highlighted.Belshazzar's Feast, a play from 1906 by the Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Hjalmar Procopé, based on the feast.Belshazzar is a 1930 novel by H. Rider Haggard. In it, the Egyptian Ramose's sister is sent as a gift to Belshazzar, and the feast is part of the plot.
  • In H. P. Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the character Zadok Allen says "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin", a reference to the Book of Daniel.
  • Robert Frost's poem "The Bearer of Evil Tidings", is about a messenger headed to Belshazzar's court to deliver the news of the king's imminent overthrow. Remembering that evil tidings were a "dangerous thing to bear," the messenger flees to the Himalayas rather than facing the monarch's wrath.
  • In Wallace Stevens' poem "Country Words" the poet sings a canto to Belshazzar and wants him "reading right".
  • In Fazil Iskander's novel Sandro of Chegem, one of the chapters depicting a dinner involving an Abkhazian dance ensemble and Joseph Stalin is titled "Belshazzar's Feast". The story was filmed in 1989.

Visual arts

Belshazzar's Feast is a painting by Rembrandt created around 1635.Belshazzar's Feast is a painting by John Martin from c. 1821.

Film