And now what was the writing? Daniel at the first glance had read that fiery quadrilateral of letters, looking like the twelve gems of the high priest's ephod with the mystic light gleaming upon them. +----+----+----+ | M. | N. | A. | +----+----+----+ | M. | N. | A. | +----+----+----+ | T. | Q. | L. | +----+----+----+ | P. | R. | S. | +----+----+----+ Four names of weight.[442] +-------------------+ | A Mina. | +-------------------+ | A Mina. | +-------------------+ | A Shekel. | +-------------------+ | A Half-mina.[443] | +-------------------+ What possible meaning could there be in that? Did it need an archangel's colossal hand, flashing forth upon a palace-wall to write the menace of doom, to have inscribed no more than the names of four coins or weights? No wonder that the Chaldeans could not interpret such writing! It may be asked why they could not even _read_ it, since the words are evidently Aramaic, and Aramaic was the common language of trade. The Rabbis say that the words, instead of being written from right to left, were written κιονηδόν, "pillar-wise," as the Greeks called it, from above downwards: thus-- +---+---+---+--+ | פ | ת | מ | מ | +---+---+---+--+ | ר | ק | נ | נ | +---+---+---+--+ | ס | ל | א | א | +---+---+---+--+ Read from left to right, they would look like gibberish; read from above downwards, they became clear as far as the reading was concerned, though their interpretation might still be surpassingly enigmatic. But words may stand for all sorts of mysterious meanings; and in the views of analogists--as those are called who not only believe in the mysterious force and fascination of words, but even in the physiological quality of sounds--they may hide awful indications under harmless vocables. Herein lay the secret. A mina! a mina! Yes; but the names of the weights recall the word _m'nah_, "hath numbered": and "God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it." A shekel! Yes; _t'qilta_: "Thou hast been weighed in a balance and found wanting." _Peres_--a half-mina! Yes; but _p'rîsath_: "Thy kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians."[444]