diff --git a/ciphers/atbash.py b/ciphers/atbash.py
index 4e8f663ed02d..408e1e5f1a1e 100644
--- a/ciphers/atbash.py
+++ b/ciphers/atbash.py
@@ -1,54 +1,78 @@
 """https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atbash"""
 
 import string
+from timeit import timeit  # Moved to top-level as required
 
 
 def atbash_slow(sequence: str) -> str:
     """
+    Atbash cipher implementation using ordinal values.
+    Encodes/decodes by reversing the alphabet.
+    
     >>> atbash_slow("ABCDEFG")
     'ZYXWVUT'
-
+    
     >>> atbash_slow("aW;;123BX")
     'zD;;123YC'
     """
     output = ""
-    for i in sequence:
-        extract = ord(i)
-        if 65 <= extract <= 90:
-            output += chr(155 - extract)
-        elif 97 <= extract <= 122:
-            output += chr(219 - extract)
-        else:
-            output += i
+    for char in sequence:
+        code = ord(char)
+        if 65 <= code <= 90:  # Uppercase A-Z
+            output += chr(155 - code)
+        elif 97 <= code <= 122:  # Lowercase a-z
+            output += chr(219 - code)
+        else:  # Non-alphabetic characters
+            output += char
     return output
 
 
 def atbash(sequence: str) -> str:
     """
+    Optimized Atbash cipher implementation using string translation.
+    More efficient than ordinal-based approach.
+    
     >>> atbash("ABCDEFG")
     'ZYXWVUT'
-
+    
     >>> atbash("aW;;123BX")
     'zD;;123YC'
     """
+    # Create translation tables
     letters = string.ascii_letters
-    letters_reversed = string.ascii_lowercase[::-1] + string.ascii_uppercase[::-1]
-    return "".join(
-        letters_reversed[letters.index(c)] if c in letters else c for c in sequence
-    )
+    reversed_letters = string.ascii_lowercase[::-1] + string.ascii_uppercase[::-1]
+    
+    # Create translation mapping
+    translation = str.maketrans(letters, reversed_letters)
+    
+    # Apply translation to each character
+    return sequence.translate(translation)
 
 
 def benchmark() -> None:
-    """Let's benchmark our functions side-by-side..."""
-    from timeit import timeit
-
+    """
+    Performance comparison of both Atbash implementations.
+    Measures execution time using Python's timeit module.
+    """
     print("Running performance benchmarks...")
-    setup = "from string import printable ; from __main__ import atbash, atbash_slow"
-    print(f"> atbash_slow(): {timeit('atbash_slow(printable)', setup=setup)} seconds")
-    print(f">      atbash(): {timeit('atbash(printable)', setup=setup)} seconds")
+    setup = (
+        "from string import printable; "
+        "from __main__ import atbash, atbash_slow"
+    )
+    # Time the slow implementation
+    slow_time = timeit("atbash_slow(printable)", setup=setup)
+    print(f"> atbash_slow(): {slow_time:.6f} seconds")
+    
+    # Time the optimized implementation
+    fast_time = timeit("atbash(printable)", setup=setup)
+    print(f">      atbash(): {fast_time:.6f} seconds")
 
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
-    for example in ("ABCDEFGH", "123GGjj", "testStringtest", "with space"):
+    # Test examples
+    examples = ("ABCDEFGH", "123GGjj", "testStringtest", "with space")
+    for example in examples:
         print(f"{example} encrypted in atbash: {atbash(example)}")
+    
+    # Run performance comparison
     benchmark()