Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920), nées Smith (sometimes referred to as the Westminster Sisters), were English Semitic scholars and travellers. As the twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, they learned more than 12 languages between them, specialising in Arabic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and Syriac, and became acclaimed scholars in their academic fields, and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England, especially to Westminster College, Cambridge.
Personal life and education
Agnes and Margaret Smith, twins born on 11 January 1843 to Margaret Dunlop and John Smith, a solicitor and amateur linguist. Their mother died three weeks after their birth, and they were brought up by nannies, a governess, and their father. They were educated in private schools in Birkenhead, Cheshire and Kensington, London (1853–62), with travels in Europe guided by their father.
After their father's death, they were left a large inheritance. 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, the twins, by then also quite fluent in Modern Greek, travelled to Athens and other parts of Greece, beginning a lifelong affectionate relationship with Greek Orthodoxy, especially the monks in office at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai. On 11 September 1883, Margaret married James Young Gibson, a scholar trained for the ministry of the United Presbyterian Church, but later working on Spanish translations. In 1887, Agnes married Samuel Savage Lewis, a classicist, librarian, and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Samuel was also a clergyman. Each marriage soon ended with the death of the husband.
Margaret was buried with her husband in Dean Cemetery in western Edinburgh. The grave lies on the north wall of the main cemetery. Agnes was buried with hers in Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge.
Academic work
By 1890, the sisters settled in Cambridge. Agnes began to study Syriac. Inspired by Quaker and Orientalist J. Rendel Harris's account of his discovery at Saint Catherine's Monastery of a Syriac text of the Apology of Aristides they travelled to the monastery in 1892, and discovered one of the earliest Syriac versions of the Old Syriac Gospels next to the earlier known Curetonian Gospels, now in the British Library, which gave insight into the Syriac transmission and added valuable variants to New Testament studies. It was one of the most important palimpsest manuscript finds since that of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1859 by Constantin von Tischendorf. The year after (1883), they returned with three Cambridge scholars that included Professor Robert L. Bensly and Francis C. Burkitt, and their wives, as well as J. Rendel Harris, to copy the whole of the manuscript The palimpsest manuscript was found to have been overwritten by the Lives of Holy Women in Syriac dated to 779 CE by John the Recluse as well as also having four 6th century folios with a Syriac witness of the Departure of Mary (Transitus Mariae) underneath.
Her second most valuable attribution to the field of Aramaic (Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Syriac) studies and New and Old Testament text critique was the purchase of another unique palimpsest manuscript, the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, in Egypt (Cairo 1895; Port Tewfik 1906), and the largest batch from an anonymous Berlin (Germany) scholar (1905), containing underneath several individual manuscripts in Christian Palestinian Aramaic of various lectionaries with Gospels, Epistles, and Old Testament pericopes, an early apocryphal text Dormition of Mary with the hagiographic story of Peter and Paul (5th–7th century), and Greek with Gospels (7th/8th centuries), overwritten by the Syriac translation of Scala paradisi and Liber ad pastorem by the monk John Climacus of Sinai (8th–9th century), of which now surfaced the missing quire at Saint Catherine’s Monastery.