words, therefore, would mean "the fish is magnificent'' (Ewald's Hebr. Gram. § 554). Michaelis himself, as he found that the Syriac name of some idol of Haran was XPSUt, which might mean aperture (see Assema- ni, Bibl. Or. i, 327 sq.), asserts that that is the Syriac form of Derceto, and brings it into connection with the great fissure in the earth mentioned in Lucian (ut sup.
At'aroth-A'dar, At'aroth-Ad'dar. See Ata- rotii.
Atbach (na^X) is not a real word, but a factitious cabalistic term denoting by its very letters the mode of changing one word into another by a peculiar com- mutation of letters. The system on which it is found- ed is this : as all the letters have a numerical value,
xiii) which swallowed up the waters of the Flood (see ■ they are divided into three classes, in the first of which
his edition of Castell's Lex. Syr. p. 975). On the other hand, Gcsenius (Thesaur. sub voce "J131) prefers con- sidering Derceto to be the Syriac XMII for JtWI, fish; and it is certain that such an intrusion of the Resh is not uncommon in Aramaic. (For other ety- mological derivations, see Alphen, Diss, d? terra Chad- rach, c. 5.) It has been supposed that Atargatis was the tutelary goddess of the first Assyrian dynasty (Der- cetadx, fr. Derceto; Niebuhr, Gesch. Assur's, p. 131, 138), and that the name appears in Tiglath- or Tilgath- Pileser (ibid. p. 37).
At'aroth (Heb. Ataroth' ', rVilBS, croicns ; Sept. 'Ar«poj.j), the name of several places in Palestine.
1. A city east of Jordan, not far from Gilcad, and in the vicinity of Dibon, Jazer, and Aroer, in a fertile grazing district (Num. xxxii, 3), rebuilt by the Gad- ites (ver. 34), although it must have lain within the tribe of Reuben, probably on the slope of the hill still retaining the name Attarus (Burckhardt, ii, 630), where there is a river having the same name (Van de Velde, Memoir, p. 220).
2. A city on the border of Ephraim and Benjamin, between Janohah and Naarath, toward Jericho (Josh, xvi, 7), and also between Archi and Japhleti (ver. 2). Professor Robinson discovered a place by the name of Atara, perhaps identical with this, now a large village on the summit of a hill, about six miles N. by W. of Bethel (Researches, iii, 80). The ruins of another place by the same name, nearer Jerusalem on the north, have also been noticed {ibid, iii, Appendix, p.
every pair makes the number tai; in the second, a hundred ; and in the third, a thousand. Thus :
"11 U, f"Q, tSS:, every pair making ten.
0*2 vb EZ, 2"1 "■ a hundred.
DT 1 13 Cp ]'p " a thousand. Three letters only cannot enter into any of these nu- merical combinations, n, 5, and ~. The first two are nevertheless coupled together ; and the last is suffered to stand without commutation. The commutation then takes place between the two letters of every pair; and the term Atbach thus expresses that X is taken for D, and 3 for H, and conversely. To illustrate its ap- plication, the obscure word "pSO, in Prov. xxix, 21, may be turned by Atbach into !~H!~lO, testimony (Bux- torf, De Abbrcviaturis, s. v.).
Athbash (rsrN) is a similar term for a somewhat different principle of commutation. In this, namely, the letters are also mutually interchanged by pairs ; but every pair consists of a letter from each end of the alphabet", in regular succession. Thus, as the techni- cal torm Athbash shows, X and T, and 3 and d, are interchangeable ; and so on throughout the whole series. By writing the Hebrew alphabet twice in two parallel lines, but the second time in an inverse order, the two letters which f< rm every pair will come to stand in a perpendicular line. 1 his system is also re- markable on account of Jerome having so confidently applied it to the word Sh"shak, in Jer. xxv, 26. He
north, have also been noticed {Una ,.,, Appendix p. - nds the parre system of commutation as
122) situated at both ends of a defile, leading into the fW P^P ^^ ^J ^.^ H that name how. \\ ady Atara, which extends a distance of 2000 yards, about halfway between Beeroth and Mizpah (De Saul-
cy, i, 101; ii, 257). This locality agrees better with the Ataroth of Ephraim than the other (see Schwarz, Palest, p. 146). The Ataroth ('ArrrpoiVj) of Eusebius (Onomast. s. v.) lay four miles north of Samaria. This Ataroth is also called "ATAROTii-AnnAit" or "Ata- roth-Adar" (Heb. Atroth' Addar', "lIX fYHHJJ, crowns of Addar [greatness"] ; Sept. 'ArapwS 'Aoap and 'ASaip) in Josh, xvi, 5; xviii, 13; where, as well as above, it is located between Bethel and Bcth-horon (see Schwarz, Palest, p. 124).
3. "Ataroth [of] the house of Joab" (Heb. Atroth' Beyth-Yoilh, nXl'i tVSl Who?' crowns of the house of Joab; Sept. 'ArapibSr o'ikov '\wfir'tfi v.r.'lioaft), a city (nominally) in the tribe of Judah, founded by the descendants of Salma (1 Chron. ii, 54). Schwarz (Palest, p. 143) identifies it with Lntrum (for el- A iron),
that called Athbash (without giving ] ever, and without adducing any higher authority frr assuming this mode of commutation than the fact that it was customary to learn the Greek alphabet first straight through* and then, by way of insuring accu- rate retention, to repeat it by taking a letter from each end alternately), and makes -{013 to be the same as bna. (See Rosenmullcr's Scholia, ad loc.) Ilottin- ger possessed an entire Pentateuch explained en the principle of Athbash (Thesaur. Philol. p. 450).