"Both books, published here together for the first time, were written in the late 1890s. The two sisters were quintessential Victorian characters - they carved out for themselves a reputation for religious scholarship and adventure. Taught the rudiments of photography, and having studied various languages, including Aramaic, they organized a caravan from Cairo to the Monastery of St. Catherine, at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

In the library they discovered, and photographed, most of the text of the hitherto undiscovered Syriac version of the Four Gospels, in a fourth-century palimpsest."--BOOK JACKET.

"For the Scholar, this book is a welcome reprint of two worthy texts, with their focus on the vagaries and excitement of historical, biblical research. For the traveller, it is a record of the hardships and rewards of travel one hundred years ago. And for the Christian, there lies within the discovery of a very remarkable variant of the reported spoken word of Jesus Christ."--BOOK JACKET.