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 Mongolian A ᠠ

Why It Is Open The descent is agreed in outline and unavailable in detail here. Mongolian took its alphabet from Old Uyghur, Old Uyghur took its own from Sogdian, and Sogdian belongs to the family descended from the Aramaic abjad. Whether the Sogdian alphabet was taken from the Syriac hand or directly from Imperial Aramaic chancery writing is argued about, and neither Old Uyghur nor Sogdian is held in this atlas as an alphabet, so no per-letter descent can be asserted from a Mongolian letter to any letter the atlas does hold. The letters here therefore carry intra-alphabet relations only.

What Would Settle It 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.

Expertise Needed Palaeography and Central Asian philology

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

Open Tibetan

Why It Is Open The script is plainly Brahmi-derived, but the candidates within that family are several and the letter forms have been argued both towards Gupta Brahmi transmitted through the Indian northwest and towards the scripts of Khotan and the Central Asian oasis towns. The traditional answer, a single minister trained in India, is first recorded four hundred years after the fact and cannot be tested against any imperial-period source.

What Would Settle It 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.

Expertise Needed Palaeography of the Brahmi-derived scripts, Old Tibetan philology, and Central Asian manuscript studies

Question posed in Tibet: A History, Sam van Schaik.

Open The Great Magical Papyrus of Paris

Why It Is Open The Theban Magical Library is a modern name for a group of papyri that share a period, a range of contents and a supplier. No excavation record exists for any of them. The attribution to Thebes and the assumption that they formed one collection both rest on the accounts of the dealer who sold them, and no scholar has been able either to confirm or to refute this from documentary evidence. It is an unresolved gap rather than a dispute between rival positions.

What Would Settle It A systematic reading of Anastasy's surviving correspondence and sale records against the acquisition registers and accession dates of the Bibliotheque nationale, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the British Museum and the Berlin collections. These archives have never been examined together for this question. Failing that, a securely excavated magical papyrus from a recorded Theban context would give the attribution an independent anchor.

Expertise Needed Papyrology, and the archival history of nineteenth century antiquities collecting

Question posed in Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, Daniel Ogden.

Open Rylands Library Papyrus P52

Why It Is Open The fragment reached the John Rylands Library as part of a purchase of papyri from the Egyptian antiquities market in the early twentieth century, most likely acquired by the papyrologist Bernard Grenfell no later than 1920. No excavation record, findspot, or acquisition documentation naming the seller or the circumstances of discovery survives or was ever published, which is typical for papyri bought on the market rather than professionally excavated.

What Would Settle It Surviving acquisition correspondence or dealer records from the Rylands Library's early twentieth century papyrus purchases, if any exist and can be located, naming the seller and the material's reported findspot in Egypt.

Expertise Needed Papyrology, library archival history

Question posed in An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library, C. H. Roberts.

Open Epistle to Diognetus

Why It Is Open No ancient writer names or quotes the letter before its single surviving manuscript resurfaces in the thirteenth century, and the letter itself names no author. Its polished rhetorical style differs from the rest of the apostolic fathers collection it is conventionally grouped with, and proposed authors and dates spanning the second and third centuries all rest on style and apparent theological concern rather than direct evidence.

What Would Settle It An independent ancient citation or manuscript witness naming the author or firmly dating the text would settle this; absent that, a scholarly consensus reconciling its style and content with a known apologetic writer's other work would narrow the range.

Expertise Needed Patristics and early Christian textual studies

Question posed in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Michael W. Holmes), Michael W. Holmes, editor and translator.

Open Eusebius of Caesarea

Why It Is Open Eusebius spent nearly all of his career at Caesarea Maritima, and scholars generally assume this was also his birthplace, but no ancient source states it directly; the assumption rests on where he later lived and worked rather than on a record of his birth.

What Would Settle It A contemporary or near contemporary source naming his birthplace independent of his adult career.

Expertise Needed Patristics; early church history

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.).

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 Niceta of Remesiana

Why It Is Open What is documented is his episcopal career at Remesiana from around 366 to his death around 414 and his missionary work among the Bessi; no ancient source records where he was born, and his frequently cited Dacian, Dardanian, Thracian or Gothic background is a modern guess from his diocese, not a birth record.

What Would Settle It A fourth or fifth century record, such as a letter of Paulinus of Nola not yet examined for this detail, naming his birthplace directly.

Expertise Needed Patristics; late antique Balkan history

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

Open Iboga

Why It Is Open Reported since 1962 and repeated many times in unregulated clinics, but the evidence base is weak. Rigorous trials have been slow, partly because the compound is controlled in many jurisdictions and partly because a treatment given once does not fit the commercial model that funds drug development. Meanwhile ibogaine is cardiotoxic, prolongs the QT interval, and deaths have occurred where screening was absent.

What Would Settle It Adequately powered controlled trials with cardiac monitoring. The question is included here rather than left to medicine because the answer bears on the plant: demand from outside Gabon is already driving overharvesting of wild stands of a slow growing species that a religion depends on.

Expertise Needed Pharmacology, addiction medicine, cardiology, conservation biology

Question posed in Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa, James W. Fernandez.

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 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 Sandalwood

Why It Is Open Sandalwood appears in Sanskrit literature whose precise dating is disputed among scholars, and in early Chinese Buddhist sources, without it having been established which candidate reference is earliest on a securely datable basis.

What Would Settle It A philological study fixing the earliest securely datable Sanskrit or Chinese text naming sandalwood specifically, rather than aromatic wood generally.

Expertise Needed Philology, Indology

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

Open Maui

Why It Is Open The atlas held two Maui rows that disagreed. The retired Character 413 stated that most Polynesian traditions treat him as a being of exceptional power within the human line rather than as an atua receiving cult. Deity 205 carries relation 4695, worshipped in Polynesian Religion, written as attested. Article 26230 on the retired row said only that in some traditions he stands closer to a god than to a man, which is weaker than either. The question was never researched; the two rows were written separately and neither knew of the other.

What Would Settle It Evidence of cult practice directed at Maui specifically: named heiau or marae dedicated to him, karakia or pule addressed to him rather than merely reciting his deeds, or offerings made to him, reported island group by island group rather than for Polynesia as a whole. A negative finding stated by a scholar of Polynesian religion would settle it equally well.

Expertise Needed Polynesian religious studies; Pacific anthropology

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

Open Kabbalah

Why It Is Open Posed by glyph-ceremonial-w5, 2026-07-25. At least three mutually inconsistent sigil sets exist for these 72 angels: the Wellcome Ms.4662 seals, Eliphas Levi's 36 double talismans, and the Golden Dawn's own seals as compiled by Lazare Lenain. None of the source images were fetchable as precise stroke data with the tools available this run (a 403 on the Wellcome material via academia.edu). Choosing one tradition and drawing it from memory would be fabrication presented as attested fact.

What Would Settle It Owner guidance on which tradition to follow, plus visual access good enough to trace that tradition's seals faithfully.

Expertise Needed Practical Kabbalah

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

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 French Academy of Sciences

Why It Is Open The Cour des comptes has published reports covering the Institut de France and its five academies collectively (2015, and a July 2021 synthesis), but no academy-specific total for the Academie des sciences alone was extractable: both PDFs returned only encoded binary content, not readable text, on repeated fetch attempts.

What Would Settle It A text-extractable copy of a Cour des comptes report on the Institut de France giving a per-academy breakdown, or the Institut de France's own published annual accounts disaggregated by academy.

Expertise Needed Public finance, institutional history

Question posed in History of the Academy, Academie des sciences, Academie des sciences.

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 The Quran

Why It Is Open Fourteen of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, exactly half the alphabet, appear disjoined at the opening of a number of suras. The classical commentary tradition records a wide range of proposals for what they do and returns no agreed answer, and one position long held within that tradition is that the meaning was not disclosed. Modern scholarship has added further proposals without producing a consensus either. This is not a case of two camps disagreeing; it is a case in which no reading has been established.

What Would Settle It 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.

Expertise Needed Quranic studies, Arabic philology and early Islamic manuscript palaeography

Question posed in The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief).

Open Lag BaOmer

Why It Is Open The rabbinic sources report the deaths of Akiva's students as a plague and do not connect them to the revolt. A reading that treats the plague as a veiled account of wartime losses is in circulation, and the counter-reading takes the sources at their word. This pass found no source it could verify on either side, so it wrote no relation between the holiday and the revolt.

What Would Settle It A study of the talmudic and geonic witnesses to the Akiva tradition set against the documentary and archaeological record of the revolt, establishing whether the connection is ancient or a later harmonisation.

Expertise Needed Rabbinic literature; Roman-period Jewish history

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