By 1890, the sisters settled in Cambridge. Agnes began to study Syriac (Margaret took it up later, in 1893,) and improve their Arabic, which Agnes had begun to learn in 1883. Enthused by Quaker and Orientalist J. Rendel Harris's account of his discovery at Saint Catherine's Monastery of a Syriac text of the Apology of Aristides they travelled to the monastery in 1892, and discovered one of earliest Syriac version of the Old Syriac Gospels next to the earlier known Curetonian Gospels. The year after (1883), they returned with three Cambridge scholars that included Professor Robert L. Bensly and Francis C. Burkitt, and their wifes, as well as J. Rendel Harris, to copy the whole of the manuscript, known as the "Syriac Sinaiticus" or the "Sinaitic Manuscript (Lewis)", which enlightened the Syriac transmission and added valuable variants to New Testament studies. The palimpsest manuscript was found to have been overwritten by the "Lives of Holy Women" in Syriac dated to 779 CE by John the Recluse as well as also having four 6th century folios with a Syriac witness of the Departure of Mary (Transitus Mariae) underneath. During this expedition, both sisters also catalogued the monastery's valuable collection of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts.