Open Questions

Open Ghmerti

Why It Is Open Ghmerti is the old Kartvelian word for the divine and remains the modern Georgian word for the Christian God, and the medieval chronicles that describe the pre-Christian Kartlian pantheon survive only in Christian-era compilation, written by authors already using the same word for the god of the new religion. Nothing in that filtered record describes an image, statue or symbol for a distinct pre-Christian figure under this name, and no archaeological find has been identified as one either.

What Would Settle It An archaeological find, a carved or cast object identifiable as a pre-Christian Kartlian sky or divinity figure, or a surviving pre-Christian textual witness independent of the later Christian chroniclers, either of which would show whether the word ever named a figure with a pictorial or sculptural tradition of its own.

Expertise Needed Kartvelian studies, Caucasian archaeology

Question posed in The Georgians (Lang), David Marshall Lang.

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 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 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 West African

Why It Is Open The grouping gathers deities from at least four distinct traditions: Ala, Amadioha and Chukwu are Igbo, Nyame, Asaase Yaa and Ananse are Akan, Amma and Nommo are Dogon, Roog is Serer, and Mami Wata is pan-regional rather than belonging to any of them. A pantheon in this atlas is tied to a single tradition, so naming one tradition for this grouping would assert that all of these deities belong to it, which is false. Vodun (West African) is already catalogued as a tradition in its own right, and the Fon pantheon points at it, so the umbrella is not simply a missing tradition.

What Would Settle It A scholarly judgment on whether a region can stand as a pantheon at all, or whether a pantheon must belong to a single tradition. If it must, the grouping splits into Igbo, Akan, Dogon and Serer pantheons and each deity is reassigned to the tradition that holds it. If it need not, the comparative grounds for treating West Africa as one pantheon need stating, and each deity still needs its own tradition recorded alongside the regional grouping.

Expertise Needed West African religious studies; Igbo, Akan, Dogon and Serer ethnography

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

Open Mexican Folk

Why It Is Open The pantheon holds one deity, Santa Muerte, and this atlas has no entry yet for Mexican folk Catholicism or for any tradition that would hold her. The gap is a missing tradition, not a missing link, so no connection can be recorded today.

What Would Settle It A decision on whether folk Catholicism should be catalogued as its own tradition or as a denomination of Catholicism, then the entry itself. The atlas already treats syncretic Afro-Caribbean traditions as their own traditions, which is the nearest precedent.

Expertise Needed Latin American religious studies; anthropology of folk Catholicism

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

Open Phrygian

Why It Is Open The pantheon holds Cybele and Attis and this atlas has no entry yet for Phrygian religion or for the Roman cult of Magna Mater that carried it westward. Several neighbouring ancient traditions already have their own entries, Hittite Religion, Etruscan Religion and Canaanite Religion among them, so the absence looks like a gap rather than a decision.

What Would Settle It An entry for Phrygian religion, or a decision that the cult belongs under an existing tradition such as Roman Religion, in which case the deities need reassigning rather than the pantheon relinking.

Expertise Needed Anatolian archaeology; Greco-Roman religion

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

Open Maasai

Why It Is Open The pantheon holds one deity, Engai, and this atlas has no entry yet for Maasai traditional religion. Comparable East and Southern African traditions already have their own entries, Zulu Traditional Religion and Shona Traditional Religion among them, so the absence is a gap in coverage rather than a considered position.

What Would Settle It An entry for Maasai traditional religion, written to the same standard as the Zulu and Shona entries, after which the pantheon links with no further decision.

Expertise Needed East African ethnography; Maasai religious studies

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

Open Raphael

Why It Is Open Until 2026-07-30 the site tagged Raphael as an Islamic archangel on the strength of a shared name alone, not through evidence. That tag was not carried across when religion membership for archangels was later reviewed: the Islamic identification runs through Israfil, and the atlas holds nothing establishing that the two figures are one and the same. Raphael's own name-origin properties tie him to the Book of Tobit and note his absence from the Hebrew Bible. Recording the identification would have been a guess, so it was left out and the question written down instead.

What Would Settle It A survey of classical Islamic angelology, hadith collections and tafsir establishing whether Israfil is identified with Raphael inside the tradition itself rather than only in later comparative writing, together with the earliest datable text that makes the equation. A positive finding is one recorded link between Raphael and Islam, with that source attached. A negative finding closes this question as withdrawn.

Expertise Needed Islamic studies, comparative angelology, history of religions

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

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 Amsha

Why It Is Open The Rigvedic name is amsa, a share, and it stands sixth in the hymn that lists the Adityas. The Vishnu Purana's list of twelve, which is explicitly solar and assigns one Aditya to each month, carries a name usually rendered Amshu, from amsu, a ray or a soma stalk. The Bhagavata Purana's list has neither. No source consulted for this entry argues the identification in either direction.

What Would Settle It A collation of the Aditya lists across the Puranic manuscript traditions, reading the name in each recension rather than in a single printed translation, and a comparison with the Brahmana passages where the count of twelve first appears.

Expertise Needed Sanskrit philology and Puranic textual criticism

Question posed in Vishnu Purana, Anonymous, Book II, chapter 10.

Open Vidhatri

Why It Is Open Vidhatri has no myth, no iconography and no cult, and outside the formulaic pairing with Dhatri he barely occurs in Sanskrit. Yet the disposer becomes an ordinary way of naming destiny in later devotional and vernacular speech. Nothing in the surviving Sanskrit sources sets out how the one became the other.

What Would Settle It A philological trace of the Dhatri and Vidhatri pairing through Puranic, epic and regional devotional literature, showing where the formula stops naming an act of divine arrangement and starts naming an agent who fixes a person's lot.

Expertise Needed Sanskrit philology, and the study of regional devotional and vernacular literatures

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open Martanda

Why It Is Open The line brings him back for birth and for death, and both readings fit. The solar reading is supported by later usage, where Martanda is an epithet of the sun. The mortal reading stays closer to what the hymn says. Neither has displaced the other and the hymn offers no gloss.

What Would Settle It A close comparison of how the commentarial traditions read the passage, set side by side rather than cited singly. No new evidence is expected; what is missing is the comparison itself.

Expertise Needed Vedic philology and the history of Sanskrit commentary

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open Diti

Why It Is Open Diti is named only a handful of times in the Rigveda, always in formulaic proximity to Aditi, with no hymn, no epithet and no story of her own. A figure of that antiquity with that little attached to her is unusual, and her full career begins only when the Puranic genealogists need two mothers.

What Would Settle It Comparative Indo-Iranian evidence for an independent figure behind the abstract noun, or a demonstration that the Vedic occurrences are all secondary to the divine name Aditi.

Expertise Needed Vedic philology and comparative Indo-Iranian linguistics

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open Kashyapa

Why It Is Open The identification is old and attractive, because the tortoise is a creation figure elsewhere in the same literature and a progenitor who is also a tortoise would join two strands neatly. The two may equally be homonyms, and a resemblance that suits a later theology is the kind of thing a later theology can produce.

What Would Settle It Comparative evidence from cognate Indo-Iranian vocabulary, or a demonstration that the tortoise sense is attested for the name before the Prajapati tortoise material that makes it attractive.

Expertise Needed Sanskrit etymology and comparative Indo-Iranian linguistics

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open Vishvarupa

Why It Is Open Both are the ordinary Sanskrit compound meaning having all forms, and the atlas holds them as separate subjects sharing a word. Whether the epithet was ever felt to carry any of the older figure, or whether the coincidence is nothing more than a common adjective doing two jobs, has not been settled.

What Would Settle It A survey of the epithet in epic and Puranic usage checking for any passage that plays the two senses against each other, which would show the connection was felt, or its absence across the corpus, which would show it was not.

Expertise Needed Sanskrit literature and the history of Vaishnava epithets

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open The Ashwini Kumaras

Why It Is Open The two twilights, the morning and evening star, the sun and the moon, day and night, and a pair of stars have all been proposed. The disagreement predates modern scholarship: Indian commentators were already recording rival opinions. No proposal has carried the field, and the hymns describe the twins by what they do rather than by what they are.

What Would Settle It Comparative evidence from the wider Indo-European divine twin material strong enough to fix a referent rather than a shared narrative pattern, or a Vedic passage that identifies the twins with a phenomenon rather than merely associating them with the dawn.

Expertise Needed Vedic philology and comparative Indo-European religion

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open The Vishvadevas

Why It Is Open The hymns addressed to the all-gods invoke Indra, Agni, Mitra and Varuna by name in the same breath, which is difficult on the totality reading and unremarkable on the class reading. The ritual tradition then gives the Vishvadevas a portion of their own in the domestic and ancestral rites, which favours a class, but ritual is capable of serving a formula a plate.

What Would Settle It A systematic account of what the hymns addressed to the Vishvadevas actually say about them, set against the hymns addressed to named collectives such as the Adityas and the Rudras, to establish whether the group has a describable collective character or only a name.

Expertise Needed Vedic philology and the study of Vedic ritual

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.