How This Works

Every question below says what would resolve it. Send evidence that meets that bar, with a source anybody can check, and an editor will weigh it. Sending evidence does not guarantee the question will be resolved. Evidence can be accepted as sound and the question still left open, because resolving one is an editorial decision about the whole state of a field, not about one submission.

The pilot field is: Palaeography

Questions Open For Evidence

• Did Honorius of Thebes exist, and if so who was he?
  Would be resolved by: A datable manuscript, charter, university record or inventory naming a magician of that name independently of the Sworn Book, or a codicological study of the surviving manuscript families that placed the attribution earlier or later than the text it introduces.
• Who wrote the Heptameron, and does it rework any material older than its sixteenth-century printing?
  Would be resolved by: A dated manuscript of the text or of a recognisable portion of it from before 1559, or a securely dated source that the printed text can be shown to be copying. Collation of the Heptameron against the surviving fifteenth-century angel magic manuscripts, done systematically rather than by impression, would establish whether it is compiled from them.
• Did Edward Kelley report what he saw in the scrying sessions, or invent it?
  Would be resolved by: It may be unresolvable in principle, which is worth recording as such. It would move on evidence of Kelley preparing material in advance, or on linguistic analysis of the Enochian corpus bearing on whether it was composed rather than received.
• What became of Juan Chocne after his forced abjuration at Cuzco?
  Would be resolved by: A search of the Cuzco ecclesiastical and notarial archives, and of the Albornoz probanzas de méritos in Seville, for any later mention of the name. Parish registers of the reducciones in the Huamanga region for the 1570s would be the other place to look.
• What became of Martín Ocelotl after he was shipped to Spain in 1537?
  Would be resolved by: A search of the Casa de la Contratación records in Seville for the sailing that carried him, and of the registers of the religious houses and prisons to which exiled offenders of the period were sent. The relevant Seville material is catalogued and has not been searched for this purpose.
• Where are the Mar Saba leaves, and would ink and paper analysis settle whether the letter is a modern forgery?
  Would be resolved by: Locating the leaves within the Patriarchate library and permitting a standard document examination: ink composition, comparison of the ink against other eighteenth-century writing in the same collection, paper and pen analysis, and assessment of the hand by a forensic document examiner. Any of those would bear directly on whether the writing is of the eighteenth century or the twentieth, which is the question the whole dispute turns on.
• When was Beowulf composed, as distinct from when the surviving manuscript was written?
  Would be resolved by: A dating argument that does not depend on assumptions about the transmission it is trying to establish. Linguistic and metrical tests have been the most productive line, and a test whose result is independent of whether the poem was copied and modernised on its way to the surviving manuscript would settle far more than another reading of the historical allusions.
• Where does the Theban sign for A come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for B come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for C come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for D come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for E come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for F come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for G come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for H come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for I come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for J come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for K come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for L come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for M come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for N come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for O come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for P come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for Q come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for R come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for S come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for T come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for U come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for V come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for W come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Which of the circulating Theban forms for W, if any, is the one Trithemius actually printed in 1518?
  Would be resolved by: A collation of the surviving copies and early impressions of Polygraphiae against the Theban charts in Agrippa's De occulta philosophia and the later grimoire reprints, reading the 1518 sign for W from the earliest surviving impressions directly rather than from any redrawing, and tracing where the divergent forms enter the tradition.
• Where does the Theban sign for X come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for Y come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Theban sign for Z come from, and does Trithemius's ascription of the script to Honorius of Thebes rest on anything but his own word?
  Would be resolved by: A codicological survey of pre-1518 manuscripts in the ars notoria and Solomonic grimoire traditions for any script matching the Theban letterforms, together with archival work on Trithemius's own circle, including his students and correspondents such as Agrippa, and a collation of the Polygraphiae chart against the earliest surviving impressions. One dated witness earlier than 1518 would settle the priority; a draft, a letter or a working paper would settle the authorship.
• Where does the Bohairic Coptic letter khai come from?
  Would be resolved by: Forms collected from dated Old Coptic and early Bohairic manuscripts and compared against the Demotic sign repertoire, with the dialect distribution of the letter mapped alongside. A published palaeographic study of that comparison would settle it or would establish that the evidence does not.
• Is the Ge'ez letter payt a modification of tayt?
  Would be resolved by: A palaeographic sequence for both letters from dated Aksumite material, showing whether the earliest forms of payt resemble tayt more closely than the later ones do, would test the derivation directly.
• Where does the Ge'ez letter psa come from?
  Would be resolved by: Dated Aksumite and post-Aksumite inscriptions and manuscripts showing the earliest forms of psa and payt, read against the Ancient South Arabian signary and against Greek letterforms in use in Aksum, would show whether the sign entered the script from outside or was built inside it.
• Where do the Glagolitic letterforms come from?
  Would be resolved by: A securely dated ninth century Glagolitic witness, or the recovery of one from the under-text of a palimpsest by multispectral imaging, would give the shapes a form early enough to be compared against the proposed models rather than against their tenth and eleventh century descendants. Failing that, a systematic morphological comparison of the whole Glagolitic repertoire against dated Greek minuscule hands and against the Semitic and Caucasian scripts proposed, published with the negative results as well as the positive ones, would establish how much of the resemblance survives measurement.
• What was the exact letter inventory and order of the alphabet Constantine-Cyril devised in 863?
  Would be resolved by: A ninth century Glagolitic witness, whether a codex, a fragment, a palimpsest under-text or a dated inscription, carrying an abecedary or enough continuous text to establish which letters were in use during the mission itself. Palimpsest recovery by multispectral imaging of the surviving early codices is the most likely route, since several of them are known to overlie earlier writing.
• What sound did the Glagolitic letter pe write, and is it a letter of the alphabet or a variant of another sign?
  Would be resolved by: An attestation of the sign in running text, in a context where the word it writes can be identified, would settle the sound. A survey of every surviving Glagolitic abecedary, recording where this sign falls in the order and whether it is ever given a numeral value in the list, would settle whether it was counted as a letter of the alphabet or carried as a variant.
• Which letter carries the numeral 400 in Church Slavonic, uk or izhitsa?
  Would be resolved by: A survey of dated Slavonic manuscripts and early printed books recording which letter carries 400 in each, by region and by period, which would establish whether the printed usage is an innovation of the printers, an inheritance from one recension, or a correction toward the Greek series.
• Did the Cyrillic letters for the sounds Greek lacked come from Glagolitic, from a Semitic script, or from neither?
  Would be resolved by: A dated exemplar of either alphabet from the period of composition, or a decisive argument from the internal structure of the two letter sets rather than from resemblance between individual shapes. Failing either, a rigorous statistical treatment of shape similarity that establishes what level of resemblance would count as evidence at all.
• Is shta a ligature built inside Cyrillic, or a Glagolitic sign redrawn?
  Would be resolved by: A close comparison of the earliest attested forms of the letter across the recensions, looking for a period or region in which the two elements are still drawn separately, which would settle the ligature reading, or for early forms too remote from sha and tverdo to be a ligature at all.
• How did the Samaritan letterforms develop between the latest Paleo-Hebrew epigraphy and the earliest surviving Samaritan manuscripts?
  Would be resolved by: Dated Samaritan inscriptions or manuscript fragments from the intervening period, of the kind the Mount Gerizim excavations produced for the earlier end of the sequence.
• Did the Mandaic letters ever carry numeric values in the Semitic alphanumeric manner?
  Would be resolved by: A survey of numbering in dated Mandaean manuscripts and inscribed lead rolls, checking colophons, quire marks and folio numbers for letters standing as figures, together with a reading of the standard Mandaic grammars on how numbers are written out.
• By what route did the letters of the traditional Mongolian alphabet reach it from the Aramaic abjad?
  Would be resolved by: Seeding Old Uyghur and Sogdian as alphabets in their own right, with their letters, so that the chain can be recorded one step at a time rather than jumped in a single relation. Alongside that, a letter by letter comparison of dated Sogdian, Old Uyghur and early Mongolian documents against Imperial Aramaic and Syriac letterforms, taken from published palaeographic work rather than inferred.
• What happened at Bizoton in 1864?
  Would be resolved by: Recovery of Haitian judicial or police records for 1864, whether in Port-au-Prince or in the French, British and American consular archives that received contemporary reports, together with a critical edition of the surviving foreign accounts collated against one another rather than read singly.
• Which deity did the earliest monumental buildings of the Eanna precinct at Uruk serve?
  Would be resolved by: A dedicatory inscription, a foundation deposit or an archaic text from the Uruk V or IV levels that names the recipient of the buildings. Failing that, a decisive advance in reading the non-administrative part of the proto-cuneiform corpus, which would let the archaic lists be read as statements rather than inventories.
• What did the khaz neumes of Armenian chant instruct a singer to do?
  Would be resolved by: A manuscript pairing khaz with a notation whose values are known, or a securely dated source setting Armenian signs beside Byzantine ones for the same melody, would give the system the external check it has never had. Comparative work on the earliest strata, before the signs multiplied, may also be able to fix a small core of them.
• What do the neumes in the tenth century Georgian hymn books record?
  Would be resolved by: A Georgian manuscript giving the same chant in both neumes and a notation of known values, or a bilingual source setting Georgian signs beside Byzantine ones, would supply the external control the system lacks. Systematic comparison of the neume repertory across the surviving tenth century books may also isolate a small core of signs whose behaviour is regular enough to test.
• What do the disconnected letters at the head of certain suras signify?
  Would be resolved by: Nothing in the manuscript record settles the meaning, and it may not be settleable. What would narrow it is evidence that bears on the openings as written objects rather than as a puzzle: systematic collation of the earliest codices for whether and how the letters are set off, and a distributional study relating the sets of letters to the suras that carry them.
• Do any sources name the three aettir of the Younger Futhark, or is the naming carried over from the Elder Futhark by modern convention?
  Would be resolved by: A reading of the standard runological literature on cryptic or cipher runes, for example Michael Barnes, Runes: A Handbook, 2012, or Klaus Duwel, Runenkunde, 2008, both already held as sources here, settling two things. First, whether the medieval evidence for the ordering of the families in cipher runes, which counts them in reverse so that the Tyr family is numbered first, is reported with family names attached or only with numbers. Second, whether the names Freyr, Hagall and Tyr for the Younger Futhark families occur in any Old Norse or Icelandic manuscript witness, or whether they enter print only in the modern revival, applied backwards from the Elder Futhark. A dated witness naming any one of the three would settle it and the rows could be seeded citing it. A demonstration that none exists would settle it the other way, and the division would stay a structural fact about cipher runes rather than three named entities.
• Is the thirty-five letter painti order attested in the Punjab before the sixteenth century, and if so in what form?
  Would be resolved by: Dated Landa or proto-Gurmukhi material with an explicit letter sequence, whether a scribal exercise, an account book heading or an inscription, from before the middle of the sixteenth century. A published palaeographic study of the ordering itself, as distinct from the letterforms, would also close it.
• Does the Ranjana tradition count the six aspirated sonorants of Nepal Bhasa, ngha, nyha, nha, mha, rha and lha, as letters of its own varnamala, or as conjuncts of a base letter with ha?
  Would be resolved by: A reading of Newar alphabet charts and primers that teach Ranjana in the Kathmandu Valley, or of the Ranjana Unicode encoding proposals submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee, either of which would state whether the six are counted as letters. If they are, they belong in the block at ids 5247 to 5252.
• Which Indic script is the direct model for the Tibetan alphabet, and was it the work of one designer?
  Would be resolved by: Dated inscriptions or manuscripts from the first century of Tibetan writing, compared letter by letter against securely dated Indic and Central Asian exemplars of the same decades. A palaeographic study of the earliest Tibetan hands against the Khotanese and northwest Indian corpora would narrow the model even if it never names a designer.