Alice Mandell

Biographic Data

ID3864131
NAMEAlice Mandell
GIVEN NAMESAlice
FAMILY NAMEMandell
SIGNATUREMANDELL A
AFFILIATIONSJohns Hopkins University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS10
TOTAL CITATIONS5
AUTHOR COUNT10
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2016
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX2

  • Literary Monumentality and the Question of Ekphrasis in the Hebrew Bible

    Lisa Cleath, Lisa J Cleath et al.ARTICLEPostscripts The Journal of Sacred…2026

    In many passages of the Hebrew Bible, one encounters vivid and carefully constructed descriptions of places, objects, cities, and bodies. These passages do more than decorate a narrative—they actively shape a reader’s sense of space, scale, and material presence. When read through the lens of monumentality, such descriptions can be understood as techniques for rendering texts themselves “monumental.” Their words bring to life inscriptions, narrat…

  • Canaanite Literary Culture Before the Bible, a View from the Canaanite Amarna Letters

    Open AccessAlice MandellARTICLEReligions2025References: 69

    The present study highlights how the Canaanite Amarna Letters offer unique insight into Canaanite literary culture in the Late Bronze Age. The letters represent the diplomatic acumen of scribes writing letters for local elites that were sent to the Egyptian court in the mid-fourteenth century BCE. Yet they also preserve the earliest evidence of Canaanite literary forms and compositional practices. The letters include memorized formulae and expres…

  • Writing as a Source of Ritual Authority

    Alice MandellARTICLEJournal of Biblical Literature2022

    Past works have connected the design, execution, and content of Aaron's inscribed clothing in the tabernacle-building narrative in Exod 28 and 39 to different types of ancient Near Eastern inscriptions. This largely form-critical enterprise sheds light on their power as inscriptions that draw authority from diverse text-types, including dedications, seals, and amulets. Yet the inscriptions set into Aaron's clothing do more than tell us about the …

  • Lachish “Letter” 2 (BM 125702)

    Alice MandellARTICLEBulletin of the American Society…2022

    Lachish 2 is typically described as an enigmatic letter, one that consists mainly of the protocol language used in letter introductions. However, past studies have wrestled with Lines 5–6 of this letter, and noted the linguistic crux posed by the verb ybkr. The present study argues that while Lachish 2 looks like a letter, it plays a different role than letters are traditionally conceived to do (as written communication media that articulate the …

  • Top-Down« and »Bottom-up« Monumentality at Kuntillet 'Ajrud

    Alice MandellARTICLEHebrew Bible and Ancient Israel2021

    In this essay I analyze the aggregate of texts, images, and vessels in the area of the benchroom in Building A of the Iron II site of Kuntillet 'Ajrud using the framework of monumentality. I examine the ways in which the monumentality of this space developed through central planning but also through the aggregation of material depositions left in the benchroom by diverse people. The ritual meaning of the benchroom and its importance as a communal…

  • Inscribing Monumentality in the Ancient Levant and in the Hebrew Bible

    Lisa J Cleath, Alice Mandell et al.ARTICLEHebrew Bible and Ancient Israel2021

  • The Material Turn in the Study of Israelite Religions

    Open AccessAlice Mandell, Jeremy Smoak et al.ARTICLEJournal of Hebrew Scriptures2019Cited by: 2

    This study discusses how a material religions approach might be applied to the study of Israelite religions. After providing a discussion of recent theory on space and the body in the study of religion, we give several suggestions for how these ideas can apply to Israelite tomb and temple spaces. Our approach brings the study of Israelite religious texts and material culture (back) into the broader study of material religion. To this end, we prio…

  • Reading and Writing Remembrance in Canaan

    Alice MandellARTICLEHebrew Bible and Ancient Israel2018

    This paper aims to bridge the gap between the study of language and material culture in the study of Early Alphabetic inscriptions. I engage with recent writings in sociolinguistics, new literacy studies, and multimodality theory to address the ways in which the design, choice in script, and socio-cultural settings of ancient inscriptions informed their meaning. I address the use of the early alphabetic script on the Lachish Ewer and Kefar Veradi…

  • Reading and Writing in the Dark at Khirbet el-Qom

    Alice Mandell, Jeremy Smoak et al.ARTICLENear Eastern Archaeology2017Cited by: 1References: 9

    How did ancient Israelites and Judeans interact with inscriptions located in subterranean contexts such as tombs, tunnels, and caves? What roles did writing hold in the darkness of such places? The present article argues that a multimodal approach to literacy needs to be applied to the study of such inscriptions in order to understand how they communicated to audiences underground in the dark. We challenge traditional approaches to the study of t…

  • Reconsidering the Function of Tomb Inscriptions in Iron Age Judah

    Open AccessAlice Mandell, Jeremy D SmoakARTICLEJournal of Ancient Near Eastern…2016Cited by: 2References: 1

    The following article challenges the widely held view that refugees wrote the inscriptions preserved on the tomb walls of Khirbet Beit Lei. We argue that the so-called “refugee-hypothesis” should be based upon a stronger methodological foundation and that the interpretation of the inscriptions at the site should give more serious consideration to their context in the space of a tomb. Toward this end, the article argues that the inscriptions shoul…