ATBASH Cipher

Hebrew scribes writing down the book of Jeremiah used a reverse-alphabet simple substitution cipher known as the ATBASH cipher. Many names of people and places are believed to have been deliberately obscured in the Hebrew Bible using this cipher. The ATBASH cipher is a Hebrew code which substitutes the first letter of the alphabet for the last and the second letter for the second last, and so on. This cipher is one of the few used in the Hebrew language. The cipher itself, ATBASH, is very similar to the substitution cipher. A substitution cipher is one where each letter of the alphabet actually represents another letter. In the case of the Atbash cipher, the first letter of the alphabet is substituted for the last, the second for the second last and so on." I.e., for us in English the letter A becomes "Z", the letter "B" becomes "Y", the letter C becomes X, and so on.

ATBASH gets it's name from the fact that in the cipher, A becomes tav( the last), B becomes shin (one before last), and so on, hence ATBSh - ATBASH.