Open Questions

Open The Eridu Temple Sequence

Why It Is Open The excavation belongs to the 1940s and its final report appeared decades later; the site has not been re-excavated with modern stratigraphic recording, and there is no published radiocarbon series running through the sequence.

What Would Settle It A new season of stratigraphic excavation at Tell Abu Shahrain, recorded to modern standards, with a published radiocarbon series tying the temple sequence to absolute dates.

Expertise Needed Near Eastern archaeology; archaeological science (radiocarbon dating)

Question posed in Eridu, Fuad Safar, Mohammad Ali Mustafa and Seton Lloyd.

Open Manasara

Why It Is Open Scholarly estimates for the date spread across the middle centuries of the first millennium CE, and the region of composition is not established either. The text is the most comprehensive surviving shilpa shastra treatise, so the answer would anchor the dating of the tradition around it, and at present the atlas can only record the spread.

What Would Settle It A dated inscription or a dated building whose plan, proportions or terminology can be matched to the Manasara's prescriptions specifically rather than to the shared vocabulary of the shilpa shastras. A critical edition establishing the relationship between the recensions would narrow the region.

Expertise Needed Indology, Sanskrit textual criticism, temple archaeology and epigraphy

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

Open Florence Campbell

Why It Is Open No source checked for this entry gives a birth year or biographical detail beyond her authorship of Your Days Are Numbered (1931) and a reported death in late 1964; her public identity survives almost entirely through the one book.

What Would Settle It A period publisher archive, obituary or genealogical record establishing her birth date and life outside her published work.

Expertise Needed Archival research, history of American occultism

Question posed in Florence Campbell (publisher biographical note), Newcastle Publishing editorial staff.

Open Salvia Divinorum

Why It Is Open The plant has no confirmed wild population, sets seed poorly and is propagated from cuttings, which points to long cultivation, as with kava and Brugmansia. But there is no colonial record of it, unlike the mushrooms and ololiuqui which the friars documented extensively, and no archaeological evidence. So the plant looks ancient and the documentation begins in the twentieth century.

What Would Settle It Discovery of a wild population would settle the origin. A colonial or pre-conquest reference, possibly under a name not yet connected to it, would settle the antiquity. Genetic work on cultivated clones could estimate how long it has been propagated vegetatively.

Expertise Needed Ethnobotany, plant genetics, Mesoamerican ethnohistory

Question posed in Ethnopharmacology of Ska Maria Pastora (Salvia divinorum, Epling and Jativa-M.), Leander J. Valdes III, Jose Luis Diaz and Ara G. Paul.

Open Vali

Why It Is Open A proposed link between Vali's name and Old Norse words for growing or ripening, motivated by how quickly the god reaches manhood in the myth itself, is treated in the reference literature as an unconfirmed coincidence with the story rather than an established derivation.

What Would Settle It A philological study weighing the proposed growing or ripening derivation against the alternatives, or an independent early attestation of the name outside the mythic narrative that could confirm or rule out the connection.

Expertise Needed Old Norse philology, historical linguistics of the Germanic languages

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

Open Bunjil

Why It Is Open Bunjil is attested across the Kulin nation ethnographic record in several colonial-era spellings, recorded by nineteenth century observers working across related but distinct language groups with no shared orthography. The word plainly identifies the creator ancestor with the wedge-tailed eagle, but no confirmed derivation of the word itself, reconciling the recorded dialect variation into one settled origin, has been established.

What Would Settle It A linguistic reconstruction of the word across the Kulin language family from a qualified historical linguist, comparing the recorded spelling variants to establish whether one original form and meaning can be recovered, or an early wordlist or grammar predating the surviving colonial-era transcriptions.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative linguistics of the Kulin languages, ethnohistory of south-eastern Australia

Question posed in The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, A. W. Howitt.

Open Catequil

Why It Is Open Catequil is recorded only through Spanish colonial chronicles transcribing Andean-language testimony into Spanish orthography, none of which explain what the name itself means. The deity's association with thunder and lightning is well established from his recorded role and myths, but no confirmed derivation for the name has been established.

What Would Settle It A philological study of the name against Quechua and other Andean languages attested in the region, or an earlier colonial-era source recording the word alongside a stated meaning, neither of which has been identified in the existing chronicle record.

Expertise Needed Andean historical linguistics, ethnohistory of the pre-Columbian Andes

Question posed in Catequil: The Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography of a Major Provincial Huaca (Topic and Topic), John R. Topic and Theresa L. Topic.

Open Gede

Why It Is Open Gede is attested as a family and title name attached to individual spirits, Gede Nibo and Gede Zaraignen among them, rather than as one deity's own proper name. A West African, Dahomean origin has been proposed given Haitian Vodou's broader Fon and Kongo ancestry, but no single derivation has become the settled reading.

What Would Settle It A linguistic study tracing the word to a specific West African source language, Fon or otherwise, or an early colonial-era or immediate post-colonial record of the term predating its documented use as the spirit family's title.

Expertise Needed Haitian Creole linguistics, Africanist studies of Fon and Kongo antecedents

Question posed in The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti, Leslie G. Desmangles.

Open Ixmucane

Why It Is Open Ixmucane carries clear role-titles in the Popol Vuh's own text, Grandmother of Day and Grandmother of Light among them, but the literal root of her proper name draws competing candidate readings from the text's Mayanist translators, with no single derivation settled.

What Would Settle It A philological study of the K'iche' text against related Mayan languages, testing the existing translators' competing conjectures for the name's root against a wider comparative vocabulary, to reach a reading the field can agree on.

Expertise Needed K'iche' Maya philology, Mesoamerican historical linguistics

Question posed in Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, translated by Dennis Tedlock.

Open Ixpiyacoc

Why It Is Open Ixpiyacoc carries the Popol Vuh's feminine ix- prefix despite being the pair's male member, a detail the text's Mayanist translators note without a settled explanation, and the literal root behind piyacoc draws competing candidate readings rather than one agreed derivation.

What Would Settle It A philological study addressing both the root itself and why the text marks a male figure with the feminine ix- prefix, which existing commentary notes but does not resolve, tested against a wider comparative K'iche' and Mayan vocabulary.

Expertise Needed K'iche' Maya philology, Mesoamerican historical linguistics

Question posed in Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, translated by Dennis Tedlock.

Open Cerberus

Why It Is Open A popular claimed Sanskrit cognate (sarvara, an epithet of one of Yama's dogs) has been judged phonetically problematic by the standard modern academic authority on Greek etymology, Robert Beekes, who classifies the name Kerberos as Pre-Greek instead, meaning no successful derivation from any known Indo-European root has been established.

What Would Settle It Either a securely attested Pre-Greek Aegean word the name can be shown to derive from, which would require new epigraphic or comparative evidence beyond what currently survives, or a phonologically sound Indo-European derivation succeeding where the Sanskrit-cognate proposal has failed.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies

Question posed in Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Robert S. P. Beekes, with Lucien van Beek.

Open Salamander

Why It Is Open The Persian compound reading (sam, "fire," plus andar, "inside") most Persian lexicographers now treat as a later back-formation from the Greek word rather than its source, and the standard modern authority on Greek etymology, Beekes, classifies salamandra itself as Pre-Greek, meaning no successful Indo-European derivation for the word has been established.

What Would Settle It Either a securely attested Pre-Greek Aegean word the name can be shown to derive from, or new philological evidence settling the direction of borrowing between Greek and Persian rather than leaving it a rejected folk etymology on the Persian side.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies, Iranian philology

Question posed in Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Robert S. P. Beekes, with Lucien van Beek.

Open Scylla and Charybdis

Why It Is Open Standard etymological reference works record both Skylla and Kharybdis as of unknown origin. Scylla's traditional folk association with skylax ("young dog") and skyllein ("to tear") fits her description but is not treated as a confirmed derivation, and no comparable folk etymology exists for Charybdis at all.

What Would Settle It A securely attested Pre-Greek or other substrate source for either name, or a phonologically sound Indo-European derivation succeeding where the traditional dog-and-tearing folk etymology for Scylla has not been confirmed as more than an apt later association.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies

Question posed in Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper.

Open Coventina

Why It Is Open No literary source or inscription outside her own shrine explains what her name means or where it comes from. The name survives only as a religious dedication carved on Roman-period altars at one site, with no surrounding text to gloss it.

What Would Settle It A comparative Celtic and Brittonic etymological study of the name against known place and water-deity name elements, and continued epigraphic survey in case an uninscribed or fragmentary dedication elsewhere in Roman Britain or Gaul preserves a related or explanatory form.

Expertise Needed Celtic and Brittonic historical linguistics; Romano-British epigraphy

Question posed in A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, James MacKillop.

Open Kislev

Why It Is Open Several Hebrew month names carry an accepted native gloss (Adar, mighty; Av, father; Elul, search or inquiry; Iyar, blossoming), already recorded on this atlas. Kislev, Shevat, Tevet and, separately, the deity name Tammuz do not: their Babylonian origin is well established but no settled etymology for the specific Hebrew forms is recorded in the sources consulted for this pass.

What Would Settle It An Assyriological or comparative Semitic source tracing each Babylonian calendar-month name to its own root meaning, matched against the accepted glosses already recorded for the other months in the same cycle.

Expertise Needed Assyriology and comparative Semitic philology

Question posed in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.).

Open Halqa ࡀ

Why It Is Open Most Mandaic letters are named by their own sound with a preceding a (ab, ag, ad...), and their own descriptions state plainly this is a pronunciation label rather than an inherited word with a sense, unlike the Northwest Semitic nouns Hebrew and Syriac kept for the same slots. Six letters break that regular pattern by their own descriptions' own account (Its own text names the set: ushenna, aksa, dushenna, kad and it itself; In and Ash are separately marked as built on a different vowel or sound), and Dushenna and Kad, two of the six, already carry attested senses because they are documented ligatures of a real Aramaic word. The other four, plus Halqa, the very first letter and one of the script's three true vowel signs, whose name is equally outside the regular pattern, have no sense offered by any source consulted, and none of their descriptions states this as a settled absence either.

What Would Settle It A study of Mandaic's own manuscript and liturgical tradition for these specific six names, checked against Mandaic vocabulary and against the older Aramaic sequence's inherited nouns for the same six slots (Aleph, Waw, Heth, Yod, Ayin, Shin), beyond what the general reference literature already surveys.

Expertise Needed Mandaic studies; comparative Aramaic philology

Question posed in The Unicode Standard, The Unicode Consortium.

Open Djervi Ⰼ

Why It Is Open Djervi, the twelfth Glagolitic letter, sits well before the point in the alphabet recitation where letter names turn opaque or Greek-derived (that boundary falls at Tvrido, the twenty-first letter). Its own description states its sound, its regional history and its descendant the Serbian djerv, but gives no Slavonic word or sense behind the name itself, and no source consulted states whether this is a settled absence or simply unresearched.

What Would Settle It A study of the earliest Glagolitic abecedaria and of the South Slavic manuscript tradition that preserves djervi, checked against comparative Slavic dialect vocabulary for a word matching the form, beyond what the general reference literature already surveys.

Expertise Needed Slavic historical linguistics; Old Church Slavonic philology

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

Open Æcerbot

Why It Is Open The word occurs once in the surviving Old English corpus. It is addressed, it is given the epithet mother of earth, and it stands where a name would stand. It has been read as a lost goddess name, as a title, as a loanword, as a corruption of another word, and as an exclamatory particle that is not a name at all. None of these has been accepted, and the reason is not that scholars are divided between defended positions but that a single occurrence gives nothing to test a proposal against. Work on it was begun and could not be concluded.

What Would Settle It A second attestation of the word in any Old English or related source: a charm, a gloss, a place name or a personal name element, showing it in a context that constrains its meaning. Old English glossaries and the English place-name survey have been searched, and re-running that search against material catalogued since, including manuscript fragments and minor place-name collections, is the practical task. A continental Germanic cognate in a comparable ritual context would serve equally well.

Expertise Needed Old English philology, Germanic comparative linguistics and English place-name study

Question posed in Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, Oswald Cockayne.

Open Fritu Ⱇ

Why It Is Open The first twenty letter names of Glagolitic are ordinary Slavonic words and read together as connected sentences, from azu buky vede, I know letters, through ritsi slovo tvrido, say the word firmly. From fritu onwards the names stop meaning anything recoverable, and the reference literature records them as of uncertain or unknown origin without offering a reading. This is an absence rather than a disagreement: no camps hold rival etymologies for these names, and no investigation has settled whether they are corrupted Slavonic words, reflexes of Greek letter names, or labels that never carried a sense. The same gap stands over the corresponding Cyrillic names, which are the same names.

What Would Settle It A systematic etymological study of the full set of Slavic letter names, working from the earliest abecedaria and from the acrostic alphabet poems of the Old Church Slavonic tradition, which arrange the names in verse and may preserve senses the plain lists do not. A demonstration that the names never carried a sense would close the question as firmly as a set of etymologies would.

Expertise Needed Slavic historical linguistics; Old Church Slavonic philology

Question posed in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.).

Open Fert Ф

Why It Is Open The first twenty letter names of both Slavic alphabets are ordinary Slavonic words and read together as connected sentences, from azu buky vedi, I know letters, through rtsy slovo tverdo, say the word firmly. After that point the names stop meaning anything recoverable. The reference literature records them as of uncertain or unknown origin and offers no reading. This is not a disagreement between scholars with rival etymologies; it is an absence. Nobody has established whether these names are corrupted Slavonic words, reflexes of Greek letter names, or labels that never meant anything at all, and the question has not been taken up.

What Would Settle It A systematic etymological study of the full set of Slavic letter names, working from the earliest abecedaria and from the acrostic alphabet poems of the Old Church Slavonic tradition, which arrange the names in verse and may preserve senses that the plain lists do not. A finding that the names are demonstrably meaningless would settle the question as firmly as a set of etymologies would.

Expertise Needed Slavic historical linguistics; Old Church Slavonic philology

Question posed in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.).