Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

This cultured and erudite daughter of sunny Italy has been a prolific writer on her favorite branch of research. Besides contributing to such publications as the Nuova Antologia and the bulletins of the archæological commissions in Rome, she has found time to prepare for the press a number of volumes of the highest value on divers questions of Roman and Greek archæology.

It is interesting, in this connection, to note the fact that, after Mme. Curie had been refused admittance into the French Academy, one of the members of this institution, who had voted against her on the ground that she was a woman, had occasion to attend a meeting of the Academy of the Lincei in Rome, an association which plays the same rôle in Italy as does the French Academy in France, and found, to his astonishment, that the dean of the department of archæology, as well as the presiding officer of some of the most important meetings of the academy, was a woman. She was no other than Donna Ersilia Caetani-Bovatelli, the learned and gracious scion of an honored race. So taken aback was the Gallic opponent of feminisme that he could but exclaim: "Diable! they order things differently in Italy from what we do in la belle France."

Considering their attainments and achievements, the two women who occupy the highest place as archæologists in the English-speaking world are Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson. They are the twin daughters of the Rev. John Smith, an English clergyman, and have long enjoyed an enviable reputation among Scriptural scholars and Orientalists.

During their youth they had the advantage of instruction under the best masters, and, among other things, acquired a wide knowledge of the modern and classical languages. Subsequent study and frequent visits to Greece and the Orient made them proficient in modern Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac. Becoming interested in the search for ancient manuscripts, they resolved to make the long and arduous journey to the Greek convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai.

In the latter part of January, 1892, these two brave and enterprising women left Suez for their destination in the heart of the Arabian desert. They were accompanied only by their dragoman and Bedouin servants. Eleven camels carried the two travelers, their baggage, tents and provisions for fifty days. They had laid in supplies not only for the two or three weeks they were to spend on the way to and from Sinai, but also for the month they expected to remain at the Convent of St. Catherine.

Arriving at the end of their journey, they were most cordially received by the monks, who afforded them every facility for examining the treasures of their unique and venerable library. They immediately set to work, and before they left the room in which the manuscripts were preserved they had made one of the most remarkable finds of the century. For, in closely inspecting a dirty, forbidding old manuscript whose leaves had probably not been turned for centuries, they discovered a palimpsest, of which the upper writing contained the biographies of women saints, while that beneath proved to be one of the earliest copies of the Syriac Gospels, if not the very earliest in existence.

No find since the celebrated discovery by Tischendorf of the Sinaitic Codex, in the same convent nearly fifty years before, ever excited such interest among Scriptural scholars or was hailed with greater rejoicings. It was by all Biblical students regarded as an invaluable contribution to Scriptural literature, and as a find which "has doubled our sources of knowledge of the darkest corner of New Testament criticism." To distinguish it from the Codex Sinaiticus, the precious manuscript brought to light by Mrs. Lewis has been very appropriately named after the fortunate discoverer, and will hereafter be known as the Codex Ludovicus.[223]

Another find of rare importance made by the gifted twin sisters was a Palestinian Syriac lectionary similar to the hitherto unique copy in the Library of the Vatican. A special interest attaches to this lectionary from the fact that it is written in the language that was most probably spoken by our Lord.

Among other notable discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister during the four visits[224] which they made to Mt. Sinai and Palestine between the years 1892 and 1897 were a number of manuscripts in Arabic and a portion of the original Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiastes which was written about 200 B.C. Previously the oldest copies of this book of the Old Testament were the Greek and Syriac versions.

What is specially remarkable about the discoveries made by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson is that they were able to make so many valuable finds after the convent library at Mt. Sinai had been so frequently examined by previous scholars. The indefatigable Tischendorf made three visits to this library and had but one phenomenal success. But neither "he nor any of the other wandering scholars who have visited the convent attained," as has been well said, "to a tithe of the acquaintance with its treasures which these energetic ladies possess."