Langdon was impressed. Teabing had just finished writing out the entire twenty-two-letter Hebrewalphabet—alef-beit—from memory. Granted, he'd used Roman equivalents rather than Hebrewcharacters, but even so, he was now reading through them with flawless pronunciation.

　　A B G D H V Z Ch T Y K L M N S O P Tz Q R Sh Th"Alef, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, Hei, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yud, Kaf, Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samech, Ayin,Pei, Tzadik, Kuf, Reish, Shin, and Tav." Teabing dramatically mopped his brow and plowed on. "Informal Hebrew spelling, the vowel sounds are not written. Therefore, when we write the wordBaphomet using the Hebrew alphabet, it will lose its three vowels in translation, leaving us—""Five letters," Sophie blurted.

　　Teabing nodded and began writing again. "Okay, here is the proper spelling of Baphomet inHebrew letters. I'll sketch in the missing vowels for clarity's sake.

　　B a P V o M e Th"Remember, of course," he added, "that Hebrew is normally written in the opposite direction, butwe can just as easily use Atbash this way. Next, all we have to do is create our substitution schemeby rewriting the entire alphabet in reverse order opposite the original alphabet.""There's an easier way," Sophie said, taking the pen from Teabing. "It works for all reflectionalsubstitution ciphers, including the Atbash. A little trick I learned at the Royal Holloway." Sophiewrote the first half of the alphabet from left to right, and then, beneath it, wrote the second half,right to left. "Cryptanalysts call it the fold-over. Half as complicated. Twice as clean."ABGDHVZChTYKThShRQTzPOSNMLTeabing eyed her handiwork and chuckled. "Right you are. Glad to see those boys at the Hollowayare doing their job."Looking at Sophie's substitution matrix, Langdon felt a rising thrill that he imagined must haverivaled the thrill felt by early scholars when they first used the Atbash Cipher to decrypt the nowfamous Mystery of Sheshach. For years, religious scholars had been baffled by biblical referencesto a city called Sheshach. The city did not appear on any map nor in any other documents, and yetit was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah—the king of Sheshach, the city of Sheshach,the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash Cipher to the word, and his resultswere mind-numbing. The cipher revealed that Sheshach was in fact a code word for another verywell-known city. The decryption process was simple.

　　Sheshach, in Hebrew, was spelled: Sh-Sh-K.

　　Sh-Sh-K, when placed in the substitution matrix, became B-B-L.

　　B-B-L, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.

　　The mysterious city of Sheshach was revealed as the city of Babel, and a frenzy of biblicalexamination ensued. Within weeks, several more Atbash code words were uncovered in the OldTestament, unveiling myriad hidden meanings that scholars had no idea were there.