6th–7th century (1906) overwritten by a Christian Arabic text (8th century); a nearly complete eleventh-century lectionary in 1895 of Christian Palestinian Aramaic with noteworthy biblical pericopes, and later 1905 some of the missing folios from a German collector (Westminster College, Cambridge); several leaves under Syriac Christian homilies where Agnes detected separate 7th and 8th century Qu'ranic manuscripts, which she and Alphonse Mingana dated as possibly pre-Uthmanic. These palimpsest folios were lent to the exhibition “Internationale Ausstellung für Buchgewerbe und Graphik" in Leipzig 1914, and due to the outbreak of the First World War they were only returned in 1936 after the successful intervention by Paul Kahle. They collected about 1,700 manuscript fragments and books including the acquisition of Eberhard Nestle library with rare editions, now known as the Lewis-Gibson collection, including some formerly of the Cairo Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, the earliest Hebrew fragments of a Ecclesiasticus manuscript, identified by Solomon Schechter. The sisters continued to travel and write until the First World War when they slowly withdrew from their activity as scholars due to ill health. Though the University of Cambridge never honoured the two scholarly twins with degrees, they received honorary degrees from the universities of Halle, Heidelberg, Dublin, and St Andrews, and both were honoured in addition with the Triennial gold medal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the blue riband of oriental research in 1915. 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. Benefaction The sisters used their inheritance to endow the grounds and part of the buildings of Westminster College in Cambridge. This was long after Nonconformists were allowed to become full members of the Oxbridge universities by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; and that Presbyterian college moved from Queen Square, London to a site acquired from St John's College, Cambridge in 1899. They also helped the establishment of the Presbyterian chaplaincy to the University of Oxford, now at St Columba's United Reformed Church, Oxford. Works Agnes Smith Lewis Eastern Pilgrims: The travels of three ladies (London, 1870) Effie Maxwell (London, 1876) (a novel) The Brides of Ardmore: A story of Irish life (London, 1880) Through Cyprus (London, 1887) Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery (London, 1884) Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the Convent of S. Catharine on Mount