AbstractThis article deals with Malay letters and documents from the archives of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie—VOC), dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The collection of “golden” Malay letters, which belonged to the governor- general of the VOC in Java (1704–1709) Joan van Hoorn, made a long voyage on the shipSandenburgfrom Batavia to Cape Town and Amsterdam in 1710. Its cultural and historical value was firstly estimated by the outstanding Russian scholar and antiquarian N. P. Likhachev, who purchased it for the Paleographical Museum in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1910. The pages of the fifty-seven diplomatic letters cover one of the most controversial periods of VOC history on the Archipelago, 1683 to 1710, the establishment of its relationships with local nobility and states. The collection represents the original letters of the sultans of Palembang, Gowa, Buton, Bone, Tallo, Banten, and Cirebon, and of prominent historical figures of Malay states as well as the famous Indian merchant from Surat, Abdul Ghafur. They are written in Malay (in Arabic graphic: Jawi and Pegon), Arabic, Javanese (in two scripts: Pegon and Carakan), Dutch, Spanish, Persian, and Chinese. Their investigation will contribute to the academic scholarship on the famous records, reconstructing the history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) on the Malay Archipelago, and on the peculiarities of Malay letter writing in different languages, scripts, and regions.