He had been fortunate in obtaining the aid of Don Pascual de Gayangos, then professor of Arabic literature at Madrid, by whose offices he was enabled to obtain material not only from the public archives of Spain but from the muniment rooms of the great Spanish families.
This must be so, for Lennox's letters of the 11th of June were intercepted by his foes, the Hamiltons, and were found in the Hamilton Muniment Room.
The muniment rooms of the monasteries contain a marvellous series of documents, including chrysobulls of various emperors and princes, sigilla of the patriarchs, typica, irades and other documents, the study of which will throw an important light on the political and ecclesiastical history and social life of the 852 East from the middle of the 10th century.
If the journals of accounts, the letters and business documents, had come down to us en masse, they would no doubt have yielded to research the history and life of Egypt day by day; but those that now represent a thousand years of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom together would not half fill an ordinary muniment chest.
Many important manuscripts in muniment rooms are still uncalendared; those of the French Foreign Office are imperfect in places, and have been little consulted; and a complete calendar of the treasures of the Advocate's Library was only recently begun.