Most People In The Ancient World Were Illiterate

Were they literate? Public reading seems to have been the norm.

By members of the congregation. A boy must be able to read from Torah by his 13th Birthday to participate in The Bar Mitzvah.

Siddurim and Mahzor (books of Hebrew liturgy) have been used for daily prayers by Jews for thousands of years.
 
Really? We should have found many more ancient scrolls.

Well, there won't be any at YOUR house.

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What was the Roman education system?

If you were rich, private tutors (pedogoggi) were employed ... often knowledgeable slaves.

Private schools, for fee, also existed for both boys and girls.
 
If you were rich, private tutors (pedogoggi) were employed ... often knowledgeable slaves.

Private schools, for fee, also existed for both boys and girls.

Yep. That's how it was in the middle east.
 
Sefer Torah (torah scrolls) are hand written on animal skin parchment, not paper

I didn't know that animal skin and parchement are the same thing.

Parchment — Pergamena
These days, parchment, in general, refers to any type of animal skin turned into a paper-like material from physical action, including the removal of extraneous flesh, fat, and hair. Meanwhile, vellum comes from the Old French word Velin, which means calfskin.
 
That's the point isn't it? Paper and scrolls were rare.
Paper as we know it was rare; they used chicken skins to make scolls, as described in the Talmud, which lasted a few years and then they had to make a new Torah.
 
Roman literacy were estimated to be between 5% to 10% of the population with some regions up to 20%. Interestingly enough there are over 11,000 examples of graffiti unearthed in Pompeii, much of it written. That would indicate that a fair number of the local population had at least some literacy,
 
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