Open Questions

Open Calligraphic Roundels of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque)

Why It Is Open Published encyclopedia and visitor-education accounts describe the roundels only in prose, as massive circular panels hung from the four dome piers, without giving a measured diameter or any other numeric dimension, and no published architectural survey of the mosque's interior fittings could be found.

What Would Settle It A published architectural survey or conservation report of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque's interior fittings giving the roundels' measured diameter, or a direct measurement taken and published by a future visitor or researcher with access to the mosque's own restoration records.

Expertise Needed Ottoman architectural history, historic building conservation

Question posed in The Divine Script: Decoding the Calligraphy of the Blue Mosque (bluemosque.tr).

Open Great Buddha of Kamakura

Why It Is Open No inscription, temple record or contemporary chronicle names the sculptor, workshop or foundry responsible for casting the 1252 bronze, unlike a number of later Japanese Buddhist bronzes whose makers are documented.

What Would Settle It A surviving Kamakura-period temple record, a foundry mark recovered from inside the hollow bronze during conservation work, or a documentary source not yet examined naming the casting workshop.

Expertise Needed Japanese art history, Kamakura-period documentary history

Question posed in Great Buddha of Kamakura (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Wilton Diptych

Why It Is Open The panel carries no signature and no surviving documentary record names its painter; art historians disagree over whether the artist was English or French (or Franco-Flemish) trained, a debate more than a century old and still unresolved.

What Would Settle It A documentary record from Richard II's own household accounts naming a payment to a specific painter, or a technical or stylistic match confidently linking the panel to another securely attributed work from the same workshop.

Expertise Needed Medieval English and French art history

Question posed in Wilton Diptych (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Ajanta Cave Paintings

Why It Is Open No inscription anywhere in the thirty caves names an individual painter or workshop; the paintings span roughly seven centuries and two distinct building phases, almost certainly the work of many different hands whose identities were never recorded or have not survived.

What Would Settle It A donor or workshop inscription not yet identified among the site's epigraphy, or a stylistic study confidently grouping specific caves to a named or datable workshop tradition documented elsewhere in the Vakataka or earlier period.

Expertise Needed South Asian art history, epigraphy

Question posed in Ajanta Caves, Paintings (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Ezana of Aksum

Why It Is Open Aksum has left no king list, annals or dated document for the fourth century. The reign is placed in the middle of the century only by inference: the sequence in which his coin types appear, the order of his stone inscriptions, and the single external synchronism of the letter from Constantius II preserved in Athanasius, which itself carries no year. No birth or death date is recorded at all, and published reign estimates differ by more than a decade at either end.

What Would Settle It A dated Aksumite document naming the king, a securely dated external record synchronising his reign with a fixed event, or a scientifically dated archaeological deposit stratified against the coin sequence, for example radiocarbon dates from a closed context containing both his pre-Christian and Christian issues.

Expertise Needed Aksumite archaeology and numismatics; Ge'ez and Sabaean epigraphy; late Roman documentary history

Question posed in Ancient Churches of Ethiopia: Fourth-Fourteenth Centuries, David W. Phillipson.

Open Gebre Meskel

Why It Is Open The Aksumite state left no king list, no annals and no dated administrative document for the sixth century. Kaleb can be placed in the 520s only through external synchronisms with the Himyar campaign, and his successors are known chiefly from coin types whose relative order is clearer than their absolute dates. Ethiopian regnal traditions assign Gebre Meskel a long reign, but those traditions are hagiographic compilations of a much later period and give figures that cannot be checked against anything. No published estimate rests on evidence rather than on the same tradition restated.

What Would Settle It A dated Aksumite inscription or document naming him, an external synchronism placing his reign against a fixed event in Byzantine, Sasanian or south Arabian record, or a scientifically dated archaeological deposit stratified against his coin issues, for example radiocarbon or archaeomagnetic dates from a closed context containing coinage of the post-Kaleb sequence.

Expertise Needed Aksumite archaeology and numismatics; Geez and Sabaean epigraphy; Byzantine and south Arabian documentary history

Question posed in Ancient Churches of Ethiopia: Fourth-Fourteenth Centuries, David W. Phillipson.

Open Lúcia dos Santos

Why It Is Open Her three biographical facts that depend on events after 2000, lifespan, manner of death and canonization, have not yet been recorded because the only Fatima sources this atlas holds are The Message of Fatima (2000) and the 2017 canonisation homily for her cousins. Neither can document a death in 2005 or a cause opened afterwards, and citing one of them anyway would be a fabricated citation. The facts are not disputed by anybody; they are simply not yet sourced. This is a sourcing gap, not a scholarly one.

What Would Settle It Any published record postdating February 2005: the Holy See's own announcement of her death, the Carmel of Coimbra's record, or the decrees of her cause as published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Adding one such source to the catalogue would let all three facts be recorded and this question closed.

Expertise Needed Church history; Catholic canon law

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

Open Vishtaspa

Why It Is Open Nothing outside Zoroastrian tradition attests him. The traditional dating, which places Zarathustra 258 years before Alexander, appears to derive from an ancient confusion between this Vishtaspa and Hystaspes the father of Darius I, who is a different and later man. Linguistic dating of the Gathas places their composition many centuries earlier, in the second or very early first millennium BCE, somewhere in eastern Iran or Central Asia, which leaves the patron with no fixed place, date or external record.

What Would Settle It An epigraphic, archival or archaeological find naming Vishtaspa in a datable eastern Iranian or Central Asian context, or a decisive advance in the absolute dating of Old Avestan.

Expertise Needed Iranian philology; Central Asian archaeology; Avestan studies

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

Open Seraphim of Sarov

Why It Is Open Nilus published the text in 1903 from papers he said reached him from Motovilov's widow, roughly seventy years after the conversation it describes. The manuscript he worked from has not been available for examination. Nobody holds a position on the proportions, because there is nothing to hold one against: this is an absence of evidence rather than a disagreement between readings.

What Would Settle It The recovery of Motovilov's original papers, or of any independent copy predating Nilus, and a textual comparison against the printed version. Failing that, a stylometric study of the printed text against Nilus's other known writing would narrow the question without closing it.

Expertise Needed Russian church history; textual criticism

Question posed in Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy, Irina Paert, On the Motovilov material.

Open Moinuddin Chishti

Why It Is Open The narrative in circulation comes from Chishti biographical collections compiled in the fourteenth century and later, and from malfuzat attributed to the early masters, several of which specialists regard as fifteenth century compositions back-dated to their subjects. The birth date and birthplace, the itinerary and the account of his arrival in India all rest on that later material.

What Would Settle It Identification of documents contemporary with him, whether Persian administrative records, waqf deeds for the Ajmer site, or attestations in works datable to the thirteenth century, examined independently of the order's own literature.

Expertise Needed South Asian history; Persian manuscript studies

Question posed in Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond, Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence, Chapters on the early Chishti sources.

Open John Chrysostom

Why It Is Open The texts, their dating and their later use in antisemitic polemic are all documented and not in dispute. What is unsettled is what follows. Historians locate them in a local Antiochene quarrel and in the conventions of ancient invective; others hold that the framing does not answer for the use made of them. Churches that venerate him have acknowledged harm without any agreed consequence for the liturgical texts or the calendar.

What Would Settle It This is not resolvable by evidence. It would be settled, if at all, by a deliberate judgement of the churches concerned, taken publicly and with reasons, in the way other reception questions have been handled.

Expertise Needed Patristics; Jewish-Christian relations; ecclesiology

Question posed in Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom, Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop, J. N. D. Kelly, Chapters on the Antiochene preaching.

Open Parshvanatha

Why It Is Open Critical scholarship accepts Parshvanatha and Mahavira as historical figures. Jain tradition holds all twenty four to be historical teachers. For the remaining twenty two there is no independent attestation, so a single answer applied across the group would misdescribe most of it in one direction or the other.

What Would Settle It Independent attestation for any individual Tirthankara beyond the two, whether inscriptional, textual from outside the tradition, or archaeological.

Expertise Needed Indology, Jain studies, and South Asian archaeology.

Question posed in The Jains, Paul Dundas, Second edition, page 19.

Open Soma

Why It Is Open The Rigveda describes a mountain plant of stalks and shoots, never mentioning root, leaf, flower, seed or fruit, and never names it in identifying terms. The Brahmanas already prescribe substitutes, so the plant had passed out of reach inside the tradition itself. Fly agaric, ephedra and Syrian rue each have serious advocates and each faces an objection that has not been answered.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of pressing stones, strainers or storage vessels from a securely dated Indo-Iranian ritual context, with the identification independently replicated. Earlier claims of ephedra in Central Asian Bronze Age vessels have not settled the matter, so replication rather than a single result is what is needed.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany and residue chemistry, working with Vedic and Avestan philology

Question posed in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, R. Gordon Wasson.

Open Haoma

Why It Is Open The Zoroastrian ceremony has been performed continuously and uses ephedra, which is the strongest evidence anyone has in the whole soma and haoma question because it is a practice rather than a reconstruction. But continuity of a rite does not establish continuity of a species, and substitution is documented on the Vedic side of the same inherited tradition.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of Iranian ritual vessels of Achaemenid date or earlier, compared against the ephedra of current practice.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany with Avestan philology

Question posed in A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce.

Open Kykeon

Why It Is Open Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck proposed in 1978 that ergot on the barley was the agent. Critics hold that ergot as it grows is severely toxic and that no ancient technique for separating a psychoactive fraction has been demonstrated, and that fasting, darkness and staging account for the reported experience without pharmacology. The oath of silence means no participant account survives to test either reading against.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of drinking vessels securely tied to the Eleusinian sanctuary and to the rite rather than to general sanctuary use, with independent replication.

Expertise Needed Archaeochemistry and classical archaeology

Question posed in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck.

Open Shagai

Why It Is Open The correspondence is exact rather than approximate: the same bone, the same four landing faces, cast in the same small numbers, read for answers and played with for entertainment in both regions. It is also exactly what one would expect to arise independently anywhere sheep are kept, since the bone is nearly cubical, resists rolling and is produced free in quantity. The objects themselves cannot distinguish the two explanations.

What Would Settle It Comparative work at the level of the cultural layer rather than the object: which faces are assigned which values, what combinations are named, and how the reading is structured. Those choices are cultural and could carry a transmission signal that the anatomy cannot. Dated archaeological assemblages showing marked or modified bones along a plausible corridor would also bear on it.

Expertise Needed Comparative archaeology of divination, and Eurasian material culture studies

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

Open Khipu

Why It Is Open That khipu record numbers in a decimal positional system is settled and readable. Beyond that the field divides. Gary Urton argues that the binary structural choices available in the medium, in colour, spin, ply and attachment, give it an information capacity well beyond accounting. Others hold the cords numerical, with any narrative held in the specialist's memory and the khipu serving as a mnemonic prompt. Colonial testimony describing khipu specialists reading out histories and confessional records is compatible with both, because a skilled performance from a numerical prompt looks identical to a reading.

What Would Settle It A matched pair: one khipu and an independent Spanish document recording the same content, aligned closely enough that the correspondence cannot be coincidence. A small number of candidate matches have been proposed and none is yet accepted as conclusive. Progress requires archival paleography alongside statistical analysis of the surviving corpus of roughly a thousand khipu.

Expertise Needed Andean archaeology, colonial paleography and quantitative analysis of the khipu corpus

Question posed in Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records, Gary Urton.

Open Khamsa

Why It Is Open A derivation from a Punic hand of the goddess Tanit is repeated widely in popular and semi-scholarly writing about North African amulets, and no chain of evidence is offered for it. No competing positive account of the origin has been established either, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement between camps.

What Would Settle It A published series of hand-shaped protective objects with secure archaeological contexts spanning the Punic period, late antiquity and the medieval Maghreb, or a study demonstrating that no such series exists and that the form arises later and independently.

Expertise Needed Punic and Roman North African archaeology, together with the material culture history of the medieval Maghreb

Question posed in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.).

Open Tislit Unzar, the Rain Bride

Why It Is Open The rite is known almost entirely from twentieth century ethnography. Anzar appears in Amazigh oral tradition, but no documentary record has been identified between antiquity and the modern recording, so claims that the procession is a pre-Islamic survival rest on nothing that can be checked, and no dated alternative account exists.

What Would Settle It An attestation of the procession, or of a recognisably related rite, in medieval or early modern Maghribi Arabic writing, in an Amazigh manuscript tradition, or in a travel account with a firm date.

Expertise Needed Amazigh philology and the ethnohistory of the Maghreb, with medieval Arabic textual scholarship

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

Open Thor's Hammer Pendant

Why It Is Open Effectively the entire corpus of around a thousand pendants falls in the ninth to eleventh centuries. That is also the conversion period, so the distribution is compatible both with an old practice becoming archaeologically visible and with a practice that begins as a response to Christian cross-wearing. No securely dated earlier example has been published, and no positive account of an earlier phase exists, so this is an evidential gap rather than a contest between established positions.

What Would Settle It A hammer pendant, or a mould for one, recovered from a securely dated context earlier than the ninth century, or a systematic re-examination and re-dating of the existing corpus establishing that no such context exists.

Expertise Needed Viking Age and Migration Period archaeology, with finds dating and metalwork typology

Question posed in Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, John Lindow.