Agnes Lewis

The discovery of the Cairo Genizah manuscript fragments in the synagogue in Al-Fustat, Old Cairo, has already been well documented. In January 1897, Solomon Schechter, the Cambridge rabbinical scholar, made his first visit to the synagogue subsequent to information given to him by the twin sisters Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson that these texts, stored there over centuries, could be of unexpected interest. The twins had visited Cairo briefly the previous year prior to the start of an expedition to look for manuscripts in Cairo and Jerusalem.

Catherine, what are you working on at the moment?

I’m writing about the Rosetta Stone and a connection it has to Cambridge, dating from the time it was originally shipped from Alexandria to London in 1801. The British Museum’s current exhibition to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the decipherment of hieroglyphs by Jean-Francois Champollion from the text on the Stone, provides a good opportunity to investigate this further.

125 years ago today, Solomon Schechter sat down to write to Agnes Lewis. His quick note dashed off ‘in haste and great excitement’ told her that he’d managed to identify one of her recently purchased manuscripts as the original Hebrew text of the book of Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sira or Sirach).

Q&A Wednesday gives a short interview with a Genizah researcher: what are they working on today? And why?

Nick, what are you working on this week?

Lately I’ve been working on late-dated manuscripts in Genizah collections. Looking at fragments dated after 1864, trying to work out how they ended up in genizot, and thinking about what that means for “Cairo Genizah” collections as we typically understand them.

Have you found many fragments that are dated that late?