Archaeology · 14 · Hoshayahu
'No one has ever had to read a letter to me!'
A letter found at Lachish, from Judah's last months, has an army officer named Hoshayahu indignantly insisting he can read his own mail and recite it from memory.
In the old kingdom, literacy was a mark of rank.
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His commander had implied he couldn't read; many officers likely couldn't. In the monarchy, literacy was the trademark, and trade secret, of the ruling class. After the kingdom fell, a new kind of text and a new kind of readership took center stage.
Source: Why the Bible Began, pp. 221–223
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