As the 19th century came to a close, European women were expected to learn to read, sew, and perhaps if their station merited it, speak a little conversational French.
According to Janet Soskice, author of The Sisters of Sinai, twin sisters Agnes and Margaret Smith were part of this era and profoundly separate from it. Raised with a boy's education, the sisters mastered five languages in childhood and kept their own counsel — traveling widely even without a male chaperone, marrying late in life, and causing some scandal with their insistence on exercising in their yard, clad in their bloomers. But the sisters also electrified British academia and the world with their breathtaking 1892 camel caravan to Africa where they visited the ancient mountaintop monastery of St. Catherine's and there identified and photographed one of the oldest Gospels ever found.
The sisters had no degrees, no titles, no breathless support from academics. Their extraordinary adventures — bolstered by the Presbyterian principle that one must do something worthwhile with one's life — were to rock British society.
They were well prepared. Having studied the extant Bible texts, the sisters learned to speak Greek, Arabic and Syriac in preparation for their trek. From other researchers they had learned of a dark closet at St. Catherine's filled with ancient texts. It was there that Agnes Smith identified and photographed the manuscript.
A fantastic book for Women's History Month, The Sisters of the Sinai reads like an adventure story of effort and achievement.
The Sisters Of Sinai
How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels
By Janet Soskice, 316 pp. Alfred A. Knopf.
