Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences

Divinity Atlas

Open Questions

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 part of the atlas the question sits in. Start here if you know the territory better than the technique.

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Showing 4 of 608 questions, filtered to 1 specialty.

4 open questions shown.

Calendars & Time 4
Chen What does the element sihoom mean in Iksihoom, the Classic name for this month?

Open Chen

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Yax What does the element sihoom mean in Yaxsihoom, the Classic name for this month?

Open Yax

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Sak What does the element sihoom mean in Saksihoom, the Classic name for this month?

Open Sak

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Keh What does the element sihoom mean in Chaksihoom, the Classic name for this month?

Open Keh

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.