Mystery of ancient Roman dodecahedron baffling experts as it goes on display in UK
Mystery of ancient Roman dodecahedron baffling experts as it goes on display in UK
Experts said they were ‘no closer’ to finding out what the mysterious Roman object actually was
A mysterious Roman object unearthed in an amateur dig has baffled experts as it goes on display in Britain for the first time.
The 12-sided object was discovered in Norton Disney, near Lincoln, in 2023, and will go on display at Lincoln Museum as part of the city’s Festival of History.
Richard Parker, secretary of the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group, said it was a “privilege to have handled” the dodecahedron, but was still at a loss over what it was.
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I think they're dice.
That is certainly one possibility, although I think the idea that these were some sort of worship object or fortune telling device by the Neoplatonists is the most likely answer, as the dodecahedron was an especially sacred object to them because it was to Plato.
A Midplatonist work attributed to the Timaeus of Plato's dialogues discusses it-
According to “Timaeus” the universe has two causes: Mind, which governs rational beings, and Necessity, which governs bodies and all irrational beings. Interpreting Plato literally, “Timaeus” affirmed the temporal creation of the cosmos, and while stating that the cosmos is capable of being destroyed by the one who created it (the Demiurge), he denied that it would ever actually be destroyed, since it is divine and the Demiurge, being good and divine himself, would never destroy divinity. In what is possibly a later addition to the text, “Timaeus” assigns numerical values to the various proportions produced by the mixture of the Same and the Different (these being the two opposing forces, productive of all motion, growth, and change in the cosmos, as discussed in the Timaeus dialogue). The substratum of all generated things is matter, and their reason-principle or logos is ideal-form. “Timaeus” then proceeds with an account of the geometrical proportions of the cosmos, finally declaring that the image of the cosmos is the dodecahedron, since that is the closest approximation to the perfect sphere, which is the image of purely intellectual reality.
Neoplatonism was a pretty big deal in the Empire in the third century.
Either that, or the Romans manufactured and buried them in order to confuse people 2000 years later.
The number 12 was really significant to early Mesopotamia and continued on trhu the Roman age. Babylonians used Base12 instead of Base10, gregorian calendar has 12 months, etc
If it was religious in nature, why wouldnt there be any manual or depiction of it in any of the existing art and structures?
IMO, the answer is because it was too mundane, like a shoelace or a paper clip to us. Someone above mentioned as possibly being for tying tent poles and the like together, which is now my new favorite theory 😃
Seems pretty simple to me. Everybody loved to gamble, so they needed to be sturdy, and also big shiny metal trinkets are cool. They have different sized holes to denote the different values of the sides, and the knobbies make them bounce and roll in unexpected ways and keep them from rolling once they come to a rest.
We do have companies like Chessex that make blingy dice for the D&D and tabletop gaming crowd today, I suppose.
I've wondered before whether a similar, but more-rollable looking strange set of artifacts that were also found in Britain might be dice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls
Those are far more ancient than Roman artifacts, though.
Actually, on second glance, they do appear to have "numeric" engravings at all the places that might settle facing up or toward you. Very interesting.
Those are actually for butt stuff.
No, but seriously I could see them being used in some sort of "marbles" -type game. Or, like, maybe some kinda twisted mini-croquet.
Dude, I got it! These were the original "tricky" golf balls. Golf probably started as rolling a rock into a hole, but when that got too easy, they started going "bet you can't get that weird shaped one in there," and then that got popular enough that people started making their own.
Of course, there were always the purists that believed the rocks should remain round and the hole should be the thing that moves.
That's why we have golf and mini golf.