J. Rendel Harris's Cambridge course in palaeography allowed Agnes S. Lewis to step onto the academic stage as a Syriac scholar "of international repute", as author of the introduction to the expedition team's 1894 publication of a translation of the palimpsest. Though the University of Cambridge never honoured the two scholarly twins with degrees (it did not admit women to degrees until 1948), they received honorary degrees from the universities of Halle, Heidelberg, Dublin, and St Andrews, and both were honoured in addition with the Triennial gold medal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the blue riband of oriental research in 1915.