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 kind of thing the question is about, so you can go straight to the entity type you work on.
Filter By Specialty 99 fields, 1 selected
Showing 1 of 608 questions, filtered to 1 specialty.
Deities 1
Nefertem
What does the name Nefertem actually mean?
Open Nefertem
Why It Is Open The name is written nfr plus tm and both halves are ambiguous. It is read as "Atum is beautiful", making the god a statement about the creator, and it is read as "the beautiful one who closes", making it a description of the lotus shutting at dusk. The two readings imply different theologies and Egyptological reference works give both without settling between them.
What Would Settle It An early attestation where the name is written with a determinative or in a context that disambiguates tm as the divine name rather than the verb, or a demonstrably early orthography that rules one reading out.
Expertise Needed Egyptology, philology
Question posed in
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Donald B. Redford (ed.).