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Devil-sAdvocate t1_j72mz2j wrote

Reply to comment by gingersaurus82 in Battle site of 'Great Revolt' recorded on Rosetta Stone unearthed in Egypt by AugustWolf22

> Any foreigner happening upon it would have to be able to both speak and write one of these two languages.

Only literate ones, and only those literate ones who knew one of those languages.

Scholars have estimated that at the high point of Greek civilization, fewer than one-third of the adult population could read or write. Even so, literacy was more widespread in the Greco-Roman world than it was in many other ancient civilizations, where the ability to read or write was limited to a small number of priests or scribes.

Very few people were literate in Egypt- almost all of them officials of state. Estimates are as low as 1% of the population as being literate in Egypt and up to 5% being the high end of the estimate.

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steveosek t1_j74vpb4 wrote

Very true. Also wasn't Greek pretty much the universal language of the time for writing? Like didn't even the Romans write in Greek a lot too?

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Devil-sAdvocate t1_j75c9q7 wrote

After Rome conquered Greece (~175 BC) they took a bunch of educated Greeks as slaves to do administration duties/scribes.

Then after the empire split, The Eastern Roman Empire mostly used Greek while the Western mostly used Latin.

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