"This new book by Alice Mandell represents a significant intervention in the study of the Amarna letters. By shifting the focus away from the putative spoken language that may or may not be reflected in these texts onto the scribal practices and strategies that produced them, Mandell charts a new course for future research that deserves the attention of any scholar working on the Late Bronze Age Near East." - Joseph Lam, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"With characteristic creativity and theoretical sophistication, Alice Mandell invites readers to look beyond and behind the unusual language of the Amarna letters and to see with new clarity the people who actually wrote them. In so doing, she brings these letters to life in fresh ways and opens the door to crucial historical and linguistic insights." - Andrew Burlingame, Assistant Professor of Hebrew, Wheaton College"In this unorthodox study, Alice Mandell introduces a multifaceted framework for analyzing the Amarna letters, reframing Canaano-Akkadian as a specialized ‘scribal code.’ This game-changing work represents a paradigm shift in the field, centering the scribes as key participants in the complex landscape of Egypto-Levantine diplomacy." - Shlomo Izre’el, Tel-Aviv University"The book sings the praise of the agency, knowledge, abilities and creativity of scribes operating some 3400 years ago. Alice Mandel puts the spotlight on scribes operating in Canaan during the 14th century BCE and producing hundreds of diplomatic letters. In this book, the text they left behind is a window into their diverse education, professional experience, expertise and motivation. For archaeologists working in the Near East on 2nd Millenium societies this materialistic approach brings the scribes one step closer to other contemporary artisans who left their unique signature in the archaeological record." - Professor Yuval Gadot, Head of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel-Aviv University"Alice Mandell is undeniably at the forefront of the next generation of Amarna scholars. In this cutting-edge study, she focuses on the language of the tablets, by means of a detailed technical analysis, in order to answer questions concerning the Canaanite scribes who made and read these letters out loud to the pharaohs and other Great Kings. Through her work, we gain a window into their world, beyond simply the basics of the diplomatic maneuvering of the rulers, and delve deep into the psyche of the scribes themselves, including their literary practices and professional training. They were the glue who held together and made possible the complex social network of the Late Bronze Age in Egypt and the Near East during the fourteenth century BCE; through Mandell’s study we are able to understand their world and that network more fully — in her own words, she “restores to them their agency as key participants in a complex and important diplomatic process.” Aimed at specialists who study the Amarna Letters in particular or the Late Bronze Age southern Levant as a whole, or who are more interested in the literacy, scribal practices, and/or socio-linguistic perspectives of the period, Mandell’s book represents a significant and novel contribution to the field." - Eric H. Cline, Professor of Classics, History, and Anthropology, The George Washington University"In this ground-breaking book, Alice Mandell provides a new paradigm for the examination and understanding of cuneiform tablets. She provides evidence that the scribes who wrote the Canaanite Amarna letters used code-switching and code-alternation between different forms of language and orthography, and pays close attention not just to the content but also to the visual design of the tablets themselves. This analysis reveals clues about the lives and training of the scribes, clues that have been awaiting discovery for more than a century since the tablets were found. Following a detailed overview of past historiography and of her innovative approach, Mandell devotes the second half of the book to an exhaustive study of five tablets, each of which is shown to reveal previously hidden aspects of the culture of the Canaanite scribes. This book will take a place among the major works on the Canaanite Amarna letters, to be consulted by scholars for decades to come." - Amanda H. Podany, Professor Emeritus of History, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona"This work offers the most comprehensive, multifaceted, and in-depth treatment to date of the linguistic phenomenon conventionally known as “Canaano-Akkadian”. Focusing on the scribal community, the study analyses and brings into dialogue a wide range of dimensions of the subject: historical context, philology, linguistics (including sociolinguistics, multilingualism, code-switching, and approaches to code alternation), orthography, and the materiality of writing (through both diplomatics and multimodal perspectives). The volume concludes with four detailed case studies. It is set to become — and to remain for many years — the standard reference work on the subject: indispensable for specialists of the Amarna period, while also being of considerable interest to linguists concerned with the various phenomena associated with multilingualism, to Near Eastern scholars working on the world of ancient scribes, and to students approaching the political and linguistic history of the Late Bronze Age Levant." - Juan-Pablo Vita, CSIC, Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo, Madrid"Alice Mandell's Canaanite Scribal Creativity and the Making of Cuneiform Culture in the Amarna Age is a landmark rethinking of what the Amarna letters can tell us about the ancient world. Resisting the long-dominant preoccupation with reconstructing the spoken language behind Canaano-Akkadian, Mandell shifts the analytical frame to the scribes themselves — their material practices, pedagogical networks, embodied expertise, and communicative creativity. The result is a remarkably comprehensive study that brings together New Literacy Studies, Community of Practice frameworks, multimodality theory, and close philological analysis to illuminate Late Bronze Age cuneiform scribalism in the southern Levant with unprecedented depth. Mandell's proposed 'code-alternation' approach offers scholars a precise and flexible tool for analyzing linguistic, orthographic, and extra-linguistic variation in these tablets, and her attention to the diplomatic and sociolinguistic contexts of individual scribes produces a richly differentiated map of Canaanite script communities. This is a book that will reshape how scholars read these tablets and, more broadly, how we think about the relationship between scribal agency, literary tradition, and the making of written culture across the ancient Near East." - Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, Princeton Theological Seminary
