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The Inscription on the Box

The wooden box given by Agnes Smith Lewis in 1893 for the protection of Sinai Syriac 30 has a silver plate set into the centre of the lid. The inscription, engraved in Greek majuscule, was composed by Charles Walter Moule, who succeeded Agnes’s husband Samuel Savage Lewis as librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

She herself provided a translation of the inscription in her book, In the Shadow of Sinai:

The four Holy Gospels in Syriac

Agnes, the foreigner, has given this casket for the Sacred Scriptures, not without gratitude, to the famous monks

Agnes Smith Lewis

The silver hallmarks. The first bears the initials of the silversmiths, Richard Martin and Ebenezer Hall. The second, a crown, is the symbol for Sheffield. The third, a lion passant guardant, attests to the purity of the silver. The fourth, the letter Z, is the date stamp for 1892.

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