Open Questions

Open Masjid al-Haram and the Kaaba

Why It Is Open The authority overseeing the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah was declared financially independent by Saudi royal decree in August 2023, but no annual budget or operating figure for the authority has been published; the kingdom's national budget statements do not break out its spending as a line item, and reporting instead announces individual infrastructure projects by their own cost.

What Would Settle It A published annual report or budget statement from the General Authority for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque itself, or a Saudi state budget breakdown that discloses the authority's allocation as its own line item.

Expertise Needed Public finance and religious administration in Saudi Arabia, and Middle East-focused financial journalism.

Question posed in Saudi Arabia Establishes New Independent Body to Supervise Affairs of Two Holy Mosques (Gulf News, 2023), Khitam Al Amir.

Open Westminster Abbey

Why It Is Open Westminster Abbey, as a Royal Peculiar, is exempt from registering with the Charity Commission for England and Wales the way Canterbury Cathedral and other great English churches with registered charity status are, so no audited public accounts for it exist on the Commission's register. It self-publishes an annual report stating only an aggregate running cost, not a total income figure broken down by source, and this pass could not extract one from the report's own document.

What Would Settle It A direct, text-readable reading of Westminster Abbey's own annual report and accounts, which the Abbey publishes as a PDF each year, isolating a total income or total funds figure and its breakdown by source.

Expertise Needed UK ecclesiastical and charity law, and nonprofit financial reporting.

Question posed in Support Us (Westminster Abbey Official Website).

Open Guruvayur

Why It Is Open A Kerala High Court division bench found in July 2026 that Guruvayur Devaswom's annual accounts for the 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 financial years had not been finalized or filed for statutory audit, that no physical verification of its gold and silver offerings had occurred in 43 years, and that auditors had been denied the digital access needed to check its online transactions, so no current total income or revenue figure for the Devaswom could be confirmed.

What Would Settle It The finalized, audited annual accounts of Guruvayur Devaswom for 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, once filed and made public in compliance with the Kerala High Court's July 2026 order, or independent reporting that reads them once they exist.

Expertise Needed Kerala Devaswom administration and public finance, and investigative or legal journalism covering religious endowment governance in Kerala.

Question posed in Kerala High Court Issues Directions To Strengthen Audit, Financial Transparency In Guruvayur Devaswom (LiveLaw, 2026), K. Salma Jennath.

Open Meenakshi Amman Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Meenakshi Amman Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it; the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue, and a Madras High Court order in September 2025 had to compel the department to produce the temple's own revenue and property details, which were not already public.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Meenakshi Amman Temple specifically, or the department's compliance with the Madras High Court's September 2025 disclosure order once it is filed and made public.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Madras High Court Seeks Full Details of Meenakshi Temple Properties, Revenue and Encroachments (LawBeat, 2025), Salil Tiwari.

Open Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Ranganathaswamy Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Brihadishvara Temple

Why It Is Open Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department administers the Brihadishvara Temple's finances but has not been found to publish a standing per-temple annual account for it, and the state's own Comptroller and Auditor General reported in December 2024 that the department withheld the documents needed to verify temple revenue across its properties generally.

What Would Settle It A published per-temple annual account from Tamil Nadu's HR&CE Department for the Brihadishvara Temple specifically, naming its own audited revenue apart from the department's consolidated figures.

Expertise Needed Tamil Nadu temple administration and public finance, and legal or investigative journalism covering HR&CE governance.

Question posed in Tamil Nadu: CAG Slams HR&CE Department for Non-Cooperation in Temple Assets Audit (Organiser, 2024), TS Venkatesan.

Open Ise Grand Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from both taxation and standing financial disclosure, and Shinto shrines including Ise Grand Shrine generally do not publish their offering income; the only widely reported figure, about 57 billion yen, is a one-time capital fundraising total for the shrine's periodic rebuilding, not an annual income or budget figure.

What Would Settle It A change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements, or a voluntary published account from the Jingu Administration Office naming Ise Grand Shrine's own annual offering income or operating budget.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Meiji Shrine

Why It Is Open The only widely circulated figure for Meiji Shrine, an estimated 1.3 billion yen over the three-day New Year holiday, comes from an outside estimator rather than the shrine's own published accounts and covers only that three-day window; Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts worship-related income from the disclosure that would otherwise make a fuller, annual figure available.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Meiji Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or a change in Japanese religious corporation disclosure requirements.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and financial or investigative journalism covering Japan's religious institutions.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Yasukuni Shrine

Why It Is Open Japan's Religious Corporations Law exempts income associated with worship from taxation and standing financial disclosure, and no figure for Yasukuni Shrine's own annual income or operating budget was located despite the shrine's unusual level of political and journalistic scrutiny on other matters.

What Would Settle It A voluntary published account from Yasukuni Shrine's own administration naming its annual offering income or operating budget, or investigative reporting that obtains one despite the general non-disclosure norm.

Expertise Needed Japanese religious corporation law and Shinto shrine administration, and investigative or political journalism covering Yasukuni Shrine specifically.

Question posed in Shrine Funds: Japan's Religious Sites and Their Undisclosed Cash (Japan Times via Green Shinto, 2018), Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku.

Open Amarnath Cave

Why It Is Open The cave is named in the Nilamata Purana and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, but neither text's date of composition is settled, so their references cannot fix how far back the site's veneration actually runs.

What Would Settle It A codicological or paleographic dating study of the manuscript traditions of the Nilamata Purana and the Rajatarangini, or an independently dated inscription or record naming the cave before the nineteenth century.

Expertise Needed Indology, manuscript studies, Sanskrit philology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.).

Open Al-Azhar

Why It Is Open Al-Azhar's waqf endowments were nationalized into Egypt's Ministry of Awqaf in 1952; the Ministry administers the national waqf estate as a whole and no source found in this pass isolates Al-Azhar's own share of it, so no current valuation of Al-Azhar's institutional wealth can be attested.

What Would Settle It A Ministry of Awqaf or Egyptian government disclosure, or an independent scholarly study of Egypt's waqf sector, that breaks out Al-Azhar's own endowment holdings from the national total.

Expertise Needed Islamic economics / Egyptian public administration

Question posed in Al-Azhar Mosque (Wikipedia), Article body, history section, on the 1952 nationalization of Al-Azhar's waqfs.

Open Uruk: the Eanna Precinct

Why It Is Open Inanna holds Eanna throughout the historical period and there is no doubt about that. The earliest monumental levels are several centuries older than any readable statement of dedication. The tablets recovered from them are accounts and word lists, the buildings carry no dedicatory inscription, and no foundation deposit naming a recipient has been found. The usual identification is an inference backward from later certainty, and no scholar has argued a rival case, because there is nothing to argue from.

What Would Settle It 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.

Expertise Needed Assyriology and proto-cuneiform palaeography, working with Near Eastern archaeology of the fourth millennium BCE.

Question posed in Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Nicole Brisch (ed.).

Open Eridu: the Temple of Enki

Why It Is Open The stack of temples is real and is cited everywhere as evidence of continuity, but continuity is an inference from the stack rather than something the stack demonstrates. The excavation belongs to the 1940s, its final report appeared decades later, and no radiocarbon series was run through the sequence. Whether the deposits between one temple and the next represent a few years or several centuries of abandonment is not recorded, and no one has argued the question either way for want of data.

What Would Settle It Re-excavation of a limited sounding through the sequence with modern stratigraphic recording, a radiocarbon series taken level by level, and micromorphological study of the intervening deposits for signs of abandonment surfaces. Any one of the three would narrow it; together they would settle it.

Expertise Needed Near Eastern archaeology, with stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating and geoarchaeological micromorphology.

Question posed in Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green.

Open Bighorn Medicine Wheel

Why It Is Open The structure is stone laid on the ground surface, so it carries no stratigraphy and cannot be dated directly. Cairns have been added to and rebuilt by users over an unknown period, and material recovered at the site has returned a wide spread of dates. Estimates in the literature run from a few centuries to several thousand years. The builders are equally open: the Plains nations now associated with the site did not all occupy the Bighorn country at the same time, and Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone and Lakota traditions each connect the wheel to their own history.

What Would Settle It A securely associated context: a buried feature or datable deposit beneath an undisturbed part of the structure, excavated with the consent of the associated nations and dated on material demonstrably contemporary with construction rather than with later use.

Expertise Needed Archaeology, working with the associated Plains nations; archaeoastronomy for the alignment claims

Question posed in Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, John A. Eddy.

Open Mount Hor

Why It Is Open The biblical text places Mount Hor in an itinerary rather than at a location, on the border of Edom between camps that are themselves unidentified. The traditional identification with Jebel Harun above Petra is comparatively late and rests on the tradition itself. A competing identification places the mountain considerably further north, nearer the edge of the Negev, on a different reading of the route.

What Would Settle It Excavation or survey producing an independent identification of any camp on the wilderness itinerary, or an early inscription or cultic deposit on either candidate summit that ties it to Aaron independently of the later shrine tradition. Failing that, the question stays open and the atlas records the identification as traditional.

Expertise Needed Biblical archaeology and historical geography of the southern Levant

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Agarwood

Why It Is Open Aguru and related terms appear in later Sanskrit, Chinese and Arabic sources, but which candidate early mention, several sit in texts of disputed date, is genuinely the earliest surviving reference has not been settled against a securely dated source.

What Would Settle It A philological study fixing the earliest secure and datable occurrence of aguru or a cognate term in a text whose date scholars agree on, or an archaeobotanical identification of Aquilaria resin residue from a securely dated find.

Expertise Needed Philology, archaeobotany

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Benzoin

Why It Is Open Benzoin, Styrax benzoin from Sumatra, was historically confused in trade and in texts with storax, a different resin from the Mediterranean, so an early mention of a term such as luban jawi cannot be taken as securely naming this specific substance without study establishing when the two were first reliably distinguished.

What Would Settle It A study of medieval Arab and European trade records tracing when a term for Sumatran benzoin first securely denotes it as distinct from Mediterranean storax.

Expertise Needed Historical linguistics, trade history

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Camphor

Why It Is Open Camphor appears in the Sushruta Samhita, an Ayurvedic compilation whose textual layers and dating are themselves disputed, and in early medieval Chinese and Arabic sources, without the relative priority of these candidate mentions having been established here.

What Would Settle It A philological study fixing the earliest securely datable layer of the Sushruta Samhita naming camphor, compared against the earliest dated Chinese or Arabic trade record for it.

Expertise Needed Philology, history of medicine

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Dammar

Why It Is Open No specific dated textual or archaeological reference for dammar's early use has been confirmed against available scholarship.

What Would Settle It A study of Southeast Asian trade records or an archaeobotanical residue analysis naming dammar specifically, rather than resin generally.

Expertise Needed Trade history, archaeobotany

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Dragon's Blood

Why It Is Open Pliny and other classical writers use cinnabaris for both the red resin later called dragon's blood and, separately, the mineral cinnabar, mercury sulfide, and scholars disagree over which passages refer to which substance.

What Would Settle It A study disentangling the classical vocabulary for red resins and red minerals, establishing which passages securely name the Socotran dragon tree resin.

Expertise Needed Classical philology, history of pharmacology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).