The article introduces into scholarly circulation a document of the epistolary genre from the early 18th century: a letter from a resident of the Olyokma fortress (presumably, Fyodor Gabyshev) to Archimandrite Theophanes, the abbot of the Spassky Monastery in Yakutsk, complaining about his oppressive neighbor, the priest Andrey Yadrikhinsky. The uniqueness of the document is determined by three circumstances. Firstly, it is a rare case of finding a text on paper during archaeological excavations. Secondly, the document was extracted from a layer of permafrost. Thirdly, the letter has clear signs of secondary use: the paper was soaked in grease, folded multiple times, and wrapped in cloth. The article discusses the circumstances and context of the discovery, and describes the stages of working on the document: straightening the paper, removing grease, revealing the text, multispectral visualization of the text, and reading the text using the “visual stratification” method using the capabilities of the Adobe Photoshop 2022 graphics editor. The article discusses the methodology of work at each stage. It substantiates the importance of the letter for studying Russian paleography, in particular, the cursive writing of the first half of the 18th century. A paleographic table is compiled, reproducing the main variants of writing capital and lowercase letters in this letter. The text of the letter is published in author’s spelling. Based on a comparison of the letter’s text with the content of other Yakut documents from the first half of the 18th century, the article suggests the letter’s dating, its author, addressee, and other characters, as well as the circumstances surrounding its existence.

DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2026.1.11

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