Agnes and Margaret Smith, twins, were born on 11 January to Margaret Dunlop and John Smith, a solicitor and amateur linguist. Their mother died two weeks after their birth, and they were brought up by their father. They were educated in private schools in Birkenhead and London, interspersed with travels in Europe guided by their father. After their father's death, they settled in London and joined the Presbyterian church in Clapham Road. Already conversationally fluent in German, French and Italian, they continued to learn languages and travelled in Europe and the Middle East, including travelling up the Nile and visiting Palestine in 1868. In 1870, Agnes wrote Eastern Pilgrims, an account of their experiences in Egypt and Palestine. In 1883, Agnes and Margaret, by then also quite fluent in Greek, travelled to Athens and other parts of Greece. beginning a lifelong affectionate relationship with Greek Orthodoxy, whose monks occupied Saint Catherine's Monastery at Sinai. On 11 September 1883, Margaret married James Young Gibson, a scholar trained for the ministry, but then working on translations; and in 1887, Agnes married Samuel Savage Lewis, librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Samuel had also trained as a clergyman. Each marriage was soon ended with the death of the husband. Margaret's marriage only lasted slightly over three years. She is buried with her husband in Dean Cemetery in western Edinburgh. The grave lies on the north wall of the first northern extension to the main cemetery.
Academic work
By 1890, the sisters settled in Cambridge. Agnes began to study Syriac and improve their Arabic, which Agnes had begun to learn in 1883. Enthused by QuakerOrientalistJames Rendel Harris's account of his discovery at Saint Catherine's Monastery of a Syriac text of the Apology of Aristides, and by news of Constantin von Tischendorf's rediscovery there of Codex Sinaiticus, they travelled to the monastery in 1892, and discovered the earliest Syriac version of the Gospels known thus far. The next year, they returned as part of a larger party that included Professor Robert Bensly and Francis Crawford Burkitt, as well as J. Rendel Harris, to transcribe the whole of the manuscript, known as the Sinaitic Palimpsest or the Sinaitic Manuscript , which provided fresh stimulus to New Testament studies. The palimpsest was found to have previously contained a Syriac Lives of the Saints by John the Recluse. During the expedition, Agnes and Margaret also catalogued the monastery's extensive collection of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts. Janet Soskice's account of the expedition describes it as "slightly disjointed", and recounts it as subject to increasing mutual suspicion and resentment. In their travels to Egypt, Agnes and Margaret were also able to buy a palimpsest codex: under the Syriac Christian homilies Agnes discovered separate 7th and 8th century Qu'ranic manuscripts, which she and Alphonse Mingana dated as possibly pre-Uthmanic. They collected about 1,700 manuscript fragments, now known as the Lewis-Gibson collection, including some formerly of the Genizah of the Bin Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo. The sisters continued to travel and write until the First World War, and were instrumental in other discoveries, including that by Solomon Schechter of an early Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiasticus. Harris's Cambridge course in palaeography allowed Agnes to step onto the academic stage as a Syriac scholar "of international repute", as author of the introduction to the expedition team's 1894 publication of a translation of the palimpsest. Though the University of Cambridge never honoured them with degrees, they received honorary degrees from the universities of Halle, Heidelberg, Dublin, and St Andrews. At Cambridge, they attended St Columba's Church. They were generous hostesses at their home, Castlebrae, which became the centre of a lively intellectual and religious circle.
An Arabic Version of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians with part of the Epistle to the Ephesians from a ninth century MS. in the Convent of Saint Catharine on Mount Sinai. Studia Sinaitica. London: C J Clay and Sons
Catalogue of the Arabic mss. in the Convent of Saint Catharine on Mount Sinai''. Studia Sinaitica. London: C J Clay and Sons
