Divinity Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
You can send evidence on some of these. A pilot is open on 55 questions in one field, Palaeography. Each says what would resolve it; send something 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, and it does not have to be your field to read what is being asked. See what is open.
Grouped by the field an answer needs. A question sitting between two disciplines appears under both, which is why the group counts add up to more than the number of questions.
Filter By Specialty 99 fields
Showing 781 to 783 of 783 open questions, page 40 of 40.
Not Yet Classified 510
Norse Paganism
Does the Old Norse corpus contain composite creatures that the atlas Hybrids facet is meant to capture?
Open Norse Paganism
Why It Is Open The facet detector reports Norse Paganism as carrying no MythicalCreature of kind Hybrids while all three Polytheistic peers do. The Norse bestiary the atlas holds is built from outsized single species beasts, serpents, sea monsters and spirits. Whether Sleipnir, Hraesvelgr, the swan maidens and the merfolk are composite creatures or shapeshifters and beasts in another guise is a question about the facet definition as much as about the sources, and triage on 2026-07-29 could not settle it.
What Would Settle It A definition of the Hybrids facet precise enough to sort cases, applied to a full inventory of creatures in the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda and the fornaldarsogur.
Expertise Needed Old Norse philology, comparative mythology
Question posed in
Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.
Senet
How was senet actually played, and how did its rules carry the funerary meaning the New Kingdom sources give it?
Open Senet
Why It Is Open No complete ancient rule text survives. Play is reconstructed from board layouts, marked squares and the partial instructions in late funerary compositions, and competing reconstructions disagree on movement and on how the marked squares functioned.
What Would Settle It A papyrus or ostracon setting out the rules of play in full, from a securely dated context, or a securely dated board with an inscribed sequence complete enough to fix movement independently of the later funerary texts.
Expertise Needed Egyptology; the archaeology of games
Question posed in
In Search of the Meaning of Senet, in Archaeology 33, Peter A. Piccione.
Mount Hor
Which mountain is the Mount Hor of the Torah?
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.