Open Questions

Open Korban (The Israelite Offering)

Why It Is Open The Mishnah was redacted around 200 CE, more than a century after the Temple was destroyed, and it is the only detailed source for most of the procedure. Josephus, Philo and the Qumran texts corroborate the institutions but very little of the fine detail, and the two bodies of evidence were produced for different purposes.

What Would Settle It A systematic detail-by-detail comparison of Mishnaic procedure against the pre-70 evidence, distinguishing points corroborated by Josephus, Philo, Qumran and the surviving epigraphy from points attested only in the Mishnah, would show where the account is anchored and where it is not. Fresh documentary or epigraphic material from the Temple period would move individual points.

Expertise Needed Rabbinics, Second Temple history, epigraphy

Question posed in From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Shaye J. D. Cohen.

Open Parah Adumah (The Red Heifer)

Why It Is Open Mishnah tractate Parah is the only source that supplies a count, and it records a dispute over the total rather than a settled figure. No independent documentary, epigraphic or archaeological attestation of any single performance has been identified, so there is nothing outside that one list against which the number can be checked. Nobody holds a defended position on the true count; the record is simply absent.

What Would Settle It An independent Second Temple period attestation would settle at least one performance: an ostracon, papyrus or inscription referring to the preparation of the ashes or to the water of lustration, or a securely dated installation on the Mount of Olives identifiable with the rite. Systematic re-reading of the Judaean desert documentary material for purity-water vocabulary is the cheapest place to look.

Expertise Needed Second Temple epigraphy and papyrology, archaeology of Roman Judaea

Question posed in The Mishnah, Anonymous (rabbinic compilers), Parah.

Open Extispicy and Haruspicy

Why It Is Open No book of the Etruscan discipline survives in any language. The Piacenza liver assigns divine names to regions of the organ and says nothing about method, and the Roman authors who describe haruspicy were writing from outside the tradition, often centuries later, and were not attempting to transmit a procedure. Nobody has proposed and defended a reconstruction of the method, so what is missing is evidence rather than agreement.

What Would Settle It An Etruscan haruspical text of any length would settle it, and a bilingual would settle it decisively. Failing that, a systematic comparison of the Piacenza liver against the far better documented Mesopotamian liver models and their accompanying omen compendia would at least establish whether the two systems share a method, which would constrain the possibilities.

Expertise Needed Etruscology, Etruscan epigraphy, Assyriology

Question posed in The Religion of the Etruscans, Nancy Thomson de Grummond and Erika Simon (eds.).

Open Aries 26

Why It Is Open Charubel gave a picture to every other degree of Aries. Here the entry opens straight into the reading and no image is set at all. Two independent transcriptions of the book agree, and the second of them does preserve his picture-less lines elsewhere, such as "This is a blank degree." and "Too revolting to be given.", so this is an absence in the printing rather than a loss in a scan. Whether the degree was ever set with an image, and whether Charubel withheld one deliberately, is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Aries 26.

Open Soma

Why It Is Open The Rigveda describes a mountain plant of stalks and shoots, never mentioning root, leaf, flower, seed or fruit, and never names it in identifying terms. The Brahmanas already prescribe substitutes, so the plant had passed out of reach inside the tradition itself. Fly agaric, ephedra and Syrian rue each have serious advocates and each faces an objection that has not been answered.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of pressing stones, strainers or storage vessels from a securely dated Indo-Iranian ritual context, with the identification independently replicated. Earlier claims of ephedra in Central Asian Bronze Age vessels have not settled the matter, so replication rather than a single result is what is needed.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany and residue chemistry, working with Vedic and Avestan philology

Question posed in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, R. Gordon Wasson.

Open Haoma

Why It Is Open The Zoroastrian ceremony has been performed continuously and uses ephedra, which is the strongest evidence anyone has in the whole soma and haoma question because it is a practice rather than a reconstruction. But continuity of a rite does not establish continuity of a species, and substitution is documented on the Vedic side of the same inherited tradition.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of Iranian ritual vessels of Achaemenid date or earlier, compared against the ephedra of current practice.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany with Avestan philology

Question posed in A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce.

Open Kykeon

Why It Is Open Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck proposed in 1978 that ergot on the barley was the agent. Critics hold that ergot as it grows is severely toxic and that no ancient technique for separating a psychoactive fraction has been demonstrated, and that fasting, darkness and staging account for the reported experience without pharmacology. The oath of silence means no participant account survives to test either reading against.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of drinking vessels securely tied to the Eleusinian sanctuary and to the rite rather than to general sanctuary use, with independent replication.

Expertise Needed Archaeochemistry and classical archaeology

Question posed in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck.

Open Shagai

Why It Is Open The correspondence is exact rather than approximate: the same bone, the same four landing faces, cast in the same small numbers, read for answers and played with for entertainment in both regions. It is also exactly what one would expect to arise independently anywhere sheep are kept, since the bone is nearly cubical, resists rolling and is produced free in quantity. The objects themselves cannot distinguish the two explanations.

What Would Settle It Comparative work at the level of the cultural layer rather than the object: which faces are assigned which values, what combinations are named, and how the reading is structured. Those choices are cultural and could carry a transmission signal that the anatomy cannot. Dated archaeological assemblages showing marked or modified bones along a plausible corridor would also bear on it.

Expertise Needed Comparative archaeology of divination, and Eurasian material culture studies

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

Open Khipu

Why It Is Open That khipu record numbers in a decimal positional system is settled and readable. Beyond that the field divides. Gary Urton argues that the binary structural choices available in the medium, in colour, spin, ply and attachment, give it an information capacity well beyond accounting. Others hold the cords numerical, with any narrative held in the specialist's memory and the khipu serving as a mnemonic prompt. Colonial testimony describing khipu specialists reading out histories and confessional records is compatible with both, because a skilled performance from a numerical prompt looks identical to a reading.

What Would Settle It A matched pair: one khipu and an independent Spanish document recording the same content, aligned closely enough that the correspondence cannot be coincidence. A small number of candidate matches have been proposed and none is yet accepted as conclusive. Progress requires archival paleography alongside statistical analysis of the surviving corpus of roughly a thousand khipu.

Expertise Needed Andean archaeology, colonial paleography and quantitative analysis of the khipu corpus

Question posed in Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records, Gary Urton.

Open Khamsa

Why It Is Open A derivation from a Punic hand of the goddess Tanit is repeated widely in popular and semi-scholarly writing about North African amulets, and no chain of evidence is offered for it. No competing positive account of the origin has been established either, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement between camps.

What Would Settle It A published series of hand-shaped protective objects with secure archaeological contexts spanning the Punic period, late antiquity and the medieval Maghreb, or a study demonstrating that no such series exists and that the form arises later and independently.

Expertise Needed Punic and Roman North African archaeology, together with the material culture history of the medieval Maghreb

Question posed in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.).

Open Tislit Unzar, the Rain Bride

Why It Is Open The rite is known almost entirely from twentieth century ethnography. Anzar appears in Amazigh oral tradition, but no documentary record has been identified between antiquity and the modern recording, so claims that the procession is a pre-Islamic survival rest on nothing that can be checked, and no dated alternative account exists.

What Would Settle It An attestation of the procession, or of a recognisably related rite, in medieval or early modern Maghribi Arabic writing, in an Amazigh manuscript tradition, or in a travel account with a firm date.

Expertise Needed Amazigh philology and the ethnohistory of the Maghreb, with medieval Arabic textual scholarship

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Thor's Hammer Pendant

Why It Is Open Effectively the entire corpus of around a thousand pendants falls in the ninth to eleventh centuries. That is also the conversion period, so the distribution is compatible both with an old practice becoming archaeologically visible and with a practice that begins as a response to Christian cross-wearing. No securely dated earlier example has been published, and no positive account of an earlier phase exists, so this is an evidential gap rather than a contest between established positions.

What Would Settle It A hammer pendant, or a mould for one, recovered from a securely dated context earlier than the ninth century, or a systematic re-examination and re-dating of the existing corpus establishing that no such context exists.

Expertise Needed Viking Age and Migration Period archaeology, with finds dating and metalwork typology

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

Open Uruk: the Eanna Precinct

Why It Is Open Inanna holds Eanna throughout the historical period and there is no doubt about that. The earliest monumental levels are several centuries older than any readable statement of dedication. The tablets recovered from them are accounts and word lists, the buildings carry no dedicatory inscription, and no foundation deposit naming a recipient has been found. The usual identification is an inference backward from later certainty, and no scholar has argued a rival case, because there is nothing to argue from.

What Would Settle It A dedicatory inscription, a foundation deposit or an archaic text from the Uruk V or IV levels that names the recipient of the buildings. Failing that, a decisive advance in reading the non-administrative part of the proto-cuneiform corpus, which would let the archaic lists be read as statements rather than inventories.

Expertise Needed Assyriology and proto-cuneiform palaeography, working with Near Eastern archaeology of the fourth millennium BCE.

Question posed in Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Nicole Brisch (ed.).

Open Eridu: the Temple of Enki

Why It Is Open The stack of temples is real and is cited everywhere as evidence of continuity, but continuity is an inference from the stack rather than something the stack demonstrates. The excavation belongs to the 1940s, its final report appeared decades later, and no radiocarbon series was run through the sequence. Whether the deposits between one temple and the next represent a few years or several centuries of abandonment is not recorded, and no one has argued the question either way for want of data.

What Would Settle It Re-excavation of a limited sounding through the sequence with modern stratigraphic recording, a radiocarbon series taken level by level, and micromorphological study of the intervening deposits for signs of abandonment surfaces. Any one of the three would narrow it; together they would settle it.

Expertise Needed Near Eastern archaeology, with stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating and geoarchaeological micromorphology.

Question posed in Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green.

Open Bighorn Medicine Wheel

Why It Is Open The structure is stone laid on the ground surface, so it carries no stratigraphy and cannot be dated directly. Cairns have been added to and rebuilt by users over an unknown period, and material recovered at the site has returned a wide spread of dates. Estimates in the literature run from a few centuries to several thousand years. The builders are equally open: the Plains nations now associated with the site did not all occupy the Bighorn country at the same time, and Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone and Lakota traditions each connect the wheel to their own history.

What Would Settle It A securely associated context: a buried feature or datable deposit beneath an undisturbed part of the structure, excavated with the consent of the associated nations and dated on material demonstrably contemporary with construction rather than with later use.

Expertise Needed Archaeology, working with the associated Plains nations; archaeoastronomy for the alignment claims

Question posed in Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, John A. Eddy.

Open Aurum Solis

Why It Is Open The 1897 founding and both founders' names rest on the order's own account and on nothing else that has been produced. No lodge record, no correspondence and no third party notice of either name from the period has come to light, and no scholar has argued the point either way, so this is an absence rather than a disagreement.

What Would Settle It An archival search for the two names in English civil registration, probate and census returns for the period, together with a search of the surviving papers and membership rolls of the English occult lodges of the 1890s, and, if the order will open them, its own pre-1971 papers. Any one of the three would move the question.

Expertise Needed Archival history; history of Western esotericism

Question posed in Encyclopedia of American Religions, J. Gordon Melton.

Open Kabbalah

Why It Is Open Posed by glyph-ceremonial-w5, 2026-07-25. At least three mutually inconsistent sigil sets exist for these 72 angels: the Wellcome Ms.4662 seals, Eliphas Levi's 36 double talismans, and the Golden Dawn's own seals as compiled by Lazare Lenain. None of the source images were fetchable as precise stroke data with the tools available this run (a 403 on the Wellcome material via academia.edu). Choosing one tradition and drawing it from memory would be fabrication presented as attested fact.

What Would Settle It Owner guidance on which tradition to follow, plus visual access good enough to trace that tradition's seals faithfully.

Expertise Needed Practical Kabbalah

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

Open The Identity of the Breastplate Leshem

Why It Is Open This investigation set out to identify the ninth breastplate stone and stopped without a conclusion, because every avenue it examined turned out to be inferential. The ancient versions disagree and none of them is independent of the others; comparison with neighbouring stone lists establishes what was available rather than what was meant; and etymology alone has not narrowed the four candidates. Nobody holds a defended position that a specialist could go and read against a rival one, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement.

What Would Settle It A securely dated use of leshem outside the two Exodus lists, in a Hebrew or closely related Northwest Semitic text, in a context that identifies a physical object. Failing that, a labelled or securely provenanced stone from a Second Temple period priestly context, or a decisive argument from Semitic cognates. Absent one of those, the honest answer is that the question may not be decidable on present evidence, and establishing that would itself be a result.

Expertise Needed Northwest Semitic philology, biblical archaeology and historical gemology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open The Huei Tzompantli Excavation

Why It Is Open The structure runs under standing colonial buildings on Calle Guatemala in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, and only the portion reachable around them has been exposed. Every published count is a count of that partial exposure and has risen with each season of work. No scholar has proposed a total, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement. The sixteenth-century figures are narrative rather than counts and cannot stand in for one.

What Would Settle It Full exposure of the structure, which would require access beneath the buildings above it, together with a minimum-number-of-individuals count taken across the complete assemblage rather than across the reachable part. Short of that, a defensible estimate would need the geometry of the excavated portion projected onto the full plan of the rack, published with its assumptions.

Expertise Needed Archaeology and bioarchaeology, with urban heritage engineering for access beneath protected colonial buildings.

Question posed in Programa de Arqueologia Urbana: the Huei Tzompantli excavations at the Templo Mayor, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia.

Open The Bengal Presidency Sati Returns

Why It Is Open The only numerical record is the East India Company series of 1815 to 1828, which covers one presidency, was compiled while prohibition was being argued for, and is concentrated around the seat of the administration that compiled it. The positions in circulation, that the practice was rare and inflated by reformers or that it was widespread and understated, are competing readings of that single series rather than independent measurements. Nobody has produced a count for any earlier period.

What Would Settle It A regional demographic study built from evidence the Company never touched: memorial stones for immolated women, which survive in numbers across western and southern India and can in principle be dated, located and counted; vernacular temple, land and family records for periods and districts outside Company reach; and inscriptional corpora already published but never assembled for this question. Both bodies of material have been used locally and never aggregated.

Expertise Needed Epigraphy and inscriptional history, historical demography, and regional social history working in the relevant vernaculars.

Question posed in Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, Lata Mani.