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." But more remarkable than the mere discovery of so many invaluable manuscripts, which was, of course, an extraordinary achievement, is the fact that these manuscripts, whether in Syriac, Arabic or Hebrew, have been translated, annotated and edited by these same scholarly women. Already more than a score of volumes have come from their prolific pens, all evincing the keenest critical acumen and the highest order of Biblical and archaeological scholarship. The reader who desires a popular account of their famous discoveries should by all means read Mrs. Gibson's entertaining volume, _How the Codex Was Found_, and Mrs. Lewis' charming little work entitled, _In the Shadow of Sinai_. As to those men--and the species is yet far from extinct--who still doubt the capacity of women for the higher kinds of intellectual effort, let them glance at the pages of the numerous volumes given to the press by these richly dowered women under the captions of _Studia Sinaitica_ and _Horae Semiticae_; and, if they are able to comprehend the evidence before them, they will be forced to admit that the long-imagined difference between the intellectual powers of men and women is one of fancy and not one of reality.[225] And yet, strange to relate, while Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson were electrifying the learned world by their achievements in the highest form of scholarship, the slow-moving University of Cambridge was gravely debating "whether it was a proper thing to confer degrees upon women," and preparing to answer the question in the negative. The fact that there were "representatives of the unenfranchised sex at their gates who had gathered more laurels in the field of scholarship than most of those who belong to the privileged sex" did not appeal to the university dons or prevent them from putting themselves on record as favoring a condition of things which, at this late age of the world, should be expected only among the women-enslaving followers of Mohammed.