Atbash is a simple substitution cipher for the Hebrew alphabet. It consists of substituting aleph (the first letter) for tav (the last), beth (the second) for shin (one before last), and so on, reversing the alphabet. In the Book of Jeremiah, לב קמי Lev Kamai (51:1) is Atbash for כשדים Kasdim (Chaldeans), and ששך Sheshakh (25:26; 51:41) is Atbash for בבל Bavel (Babylon). It has been associated with the esoteric methodologies of Jewish mysticism's interpretations of Hebrew religious texts as in the Kabbalah. An Atbash cipher for the Roman alphabet would be as follows:
Plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz Cipher: ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
An easier, simpler and faster way of doing this is:
First 13 letters: A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M Last 13 Letters: Z|Y|X|W|V|U|T|S|R|Q|P|O|N
Atbash can also be used to mean the same thing in any other alphabet as well. This is a very simple substitution cipher. For example, in Atbash, the letters "nlmvb" indicate the word "money". A few English words 'Atbash' into other English words. For example, "hob"="sly", "hold"="slow", "holy"="slob", "horn"="slim", "zoo"="all", "irk"="rip", "low"="old", "glow"="told", and "grog"="tilt". It is a very weak cipher because it only has one possible key, and it is a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher. However, this may not have been an issue in the cipher's time. The Atbash cipher is referenced in Google's Da Vinci Code Quest, in which participants must decode a common word from Atbash.
See also
External links
- Javascript online encrypter/decrypter for Atbash
- MS-DOS software for encrypting and decrypting with Atbash
- Atbash as discussed on The Beginner's Guide to Cryptography
- An online encrypter/decrypter for Atbash
- An online Atbash encoder/decoder
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Classical cryptography
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