The following essay discusses Agnes Smith Lewis and her sister, Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

Before 1892, the year in which they discovered the Mount Sinai Palimpsest (or Lewis Codex), Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, her twin sister had traveled to Greece, Egypt, and Cyprus. Their discovery was the event that began their careers as biblical scholars, and their journeys provided bases for the three well-written travel books they published about their experiences. The people among whom Lewis traveled regarded one of her books, Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery (1884), so highly that it was translated into Greek, and her command of that language was so expert that she translated Panagiotes G. Kastromenos's The Monuments of Athens: An Historical and Archaeological Description (1884).

Though Lewis gave her sister a pseudonym in the narratives, Gibson was more than Lewis's traveling companion. Gibson contributed the sketches that illustrate their first book, Eastern...