Belshazzar's Feast

At his impious feast, the Babylonian king Belshazzar sees a hand write four words on the wall: MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN. The Book of Daniel says none of his wise men could read them. Rembrandt asked a Sephardic rabbi in Amsterdam — the humanist Menasseh ben Israel — how the letters would have to be arranged for the wise men to be genuinely stumped. The rabbi told him: written top-to- bottom in columns, then read right-to-left across the columns. Rembrandt painted exactly that. It's why the words are unreadable at first glance — even for a Hebrew speaker. Now at The National Gallery, London @nationalgallery