Dream Request

This magical text presents a dream request, which has been encrypted in a coded alphabet that is decipherable into Hebrew. Chatun bat Qatzur requests to be shown in a dream the gold coins she thinks may be hidden in her house; the local jinn spirit is referred to as the “priest” (komer). The text begins with an indecipherable string of letters. Other texts from the Cairo Geniza use encrypted codes, but this code appears to be unique. Letters with question marks have a doubtful reading, and those between forward slashes appear above the line; where a hyphen appears instead of a letter, it represents a cipher whose meaning was unknown to the translator. Italicized letters and words indicate that in the original they appear in plain text rather than encryption.