The Mysterious Writing on the Wall of the Cellar Where the Tsar Family Were Murdered

In addition to traces of bullets and blood found in cellar room, investigators of Namiotkine and Sergueiev discovered different graffitis on wallpaper. Some of them were insults against the Romanov family and obviously written before the execution when the room hosted red guards of Ipatiev house. Others were drawings showing Rasputin and Czarina in pornographic attitude.

The famous wallpaper piece from the cellar room with the Heine's words exposed during the Trans-Siberian Express exhibition in Brussels (february 2006).

The following words were also found on cellar room wall :

"Belsatzar ward in selbiger Nacht Von seinen Kuechter umgebracht"

which means in English :

"Balthazar was, in this same night killed by his slaves"

These words are distorted extracts from "Balthazar" poem written by the German poet Heinrich Heine. The poem, which has a biblical inspiration, evokes the legend of the last king of Babylon : Balthazar. The latter is said to have shown his profanity during a dinner using holy vases from Jerusalem's temple. Then, the dinner was interrupted because a hand appeared and wrote on the wall these words :

"Man","Thcel" and "Phars".

The Heine's words (details)

Prophet Daniel, called to decipher it, understood these words as the next judgment of king Balthazar and the conquest of his kingdom. In fact, the same night, Balthazar was killed by his own men and the kingdom conquered by Cyrus. But the German for "Balthazar" is "Belsazar" without "t". The addition of this "t" reveals the word "Tzar" (Belsatzar) and Heine's poem then takes a strong meaning in this place... Who could have written these words? One red gard of Ipatiev house? He would have been very cultured and had known the German language well. And why confess implicitly the murder of Romanov family with these words after all efforts made otherwise to hide it? Finally, we can imagine, that these words had simply been written by one of the many people who had visited Ipatiev house after bolshevickss departure, like tourists writing words on monument's walls.

Mysterious signs near window

Later, near windows, Sokolov, during investigations, also found these words :

'24678 rous. of the year' year 1918' ' 148467878 r's ' 878888 ' and 'polouverchok's
as well as signs on the left Numerous attempts were made to decipher these signs without success. For example, in 1923, a man called Enel wrote in a book that these mysterious signs were secrets persians characters meaning:

"Here, through secret forces, the Czar has been offered in sacrifice so that his country be destroyed. All peoples are informed of this event."
It is one of the numerous interpretations of these signs. More recently, people write me another theory about the meaning of this signs :

"If held to a mirror it spells, Lysva. Lysva is a small town near Perm, where Count Beckendorf, Marshall of the Court and the head of Nicholas court function's country estate was located."

But reality is maybe more simple as Nicolas Ross explains in his book about the Romanov drama : According to him, after bolshevicks departure, when Ipatiev house hosted white army, someone could have entered cellar room, used the wall to make calculations in roubles (.rou of the previous words) and had tried his pen before writing.

Drawing of the execution scene with mystic signs on wall (unknown origin)

Writing on the Wall: The Heine Quotation Lines adapted from the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) were found written on the wall, by the window, in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where the Romanovs were shot and bayoneted. The distich reads: "Belsatzar ward in selbiger Nacht / Von seinen Knechten umgebracht," "Belsatzar was, on the same night, killed by his slaves."

Belshazzar -- the Gentile king of Babylon who, in the well-known Old Testament story, saw "the writing on the wall" foretelling his destruction (Daniel 5) -- was killed as punishment for his offenses against Israel's God. In a clever play on the Heine quotation, the unknown writer, almost certainly one of the killers, has substituted "Belsatzar" for Heine's spelling "Belsazar," in order to signal even more clearly his intended symbolism. The Heine inscription described the racial/ethnic character of the murders: A Gentile king had just been killed as an act of Jewish retribution.