Not a house today, but house back then. Another way to look at it was that housing was cheaper (for an arguably much inferior product). I've built some wattle a

Not a house today, but house back then. Another way to look at it was that housing was cheaper (for an arguably much inferior product). I've built some wattle and daub structures and a small house could probably be built in a small number of weeks by a couple of labors. But a manuscript might take a year or more for a scribe to fully copy (with illustrations).