Another article:
“What I think it is is a device for framing the constellations of the zodiac," Dr Foyle said
Future archaeologist will probably recognize Smokey as a bear with a hat but will they know it means don’t start wildfires?
I’m not seeing it.
I don’t either. The fact that the dodecahedron has twelve sides, coinciding with the twelve signa of the zodiac, is suggestive (I noted above that there might be a tie-in with the zodiac and Mithraism, since the regions where the dodecahedrons were found almost coincides with the locations of Mithreaia, but there’s nothing more than that). I don’t see the different-sized openings “framing” the zodiac conbstellations.
The one found in Geneva has 12 zodiac inscriptions but I can’t seem to find any information on what size hole each of the inscriptions corresponded to. If they happened to correspond in increasing size to the angular distance taken up by the stars in the respective zodiac symbol, that would be even more suggestive.
1950s Vintage Italian Leather and Wood Zodiac Signs Dodecahedron Paperweight. Note the metal nodules on the corners. This doesn’t explain the varying size of the holes though.
The knick knack hypothesis was discussed upthread. The Roman Dodecahedrons could function as paperweights, that wouldn’t explain why they disappeared. Also, the dodecahedrons seem a little light for that job, though I guess an interior weight could have been lost to time.
Here’s another ancient example from a Belgium museum. Note the greater similarity of the sizes of the holes as well as the smaller nodules. If a properly sized glass object was inserted, could they have functioned as lanterns without leaving any carbon residue?
I agree but there were also 12 apostles or 12 tables (code of law). There are probable a lot of other 12s that are significant - maybe some we no longer know about?
The one with the zodiac signs does not have holes. It’s a solid dodecahedron much like a 12-sided die. It’s sufficiently different from the other dodecahedra that it’s most likely unrelated.
Ah, that’s too bad.
Especially since there are only so many Platonic solids. Maybe they made them dodecahedrons because someone just liked that particular shape, or maybe it’s the pentagons that are important, or maybe they needed something that had “about ten” sides, and 12 was just a bit better than 8 (and much better than 20 or 6).
Indeed. But the Roman troops were overwhelmingly Mithraist, not Christian.
The Geneva dodecahedron was discussed way up-thread. Click the image link for a photo from the museum.
Here’s a really good image of the one in Geneva. https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/400/482/512/953/961/original/a68100b6da0adeb4.jpeg
That’s interesting - for all that it’s quite a modern object, that’s the first example of anything I’ve really seen where I thought ‘oh yeah, there’s a thing that looks like it might have a common purpose with that other thing’.
But that might just be because the person who made the zodiac thing explicitly wanted it to somewhat resemble the Roman dodecahedron - that is, this might be their conscious interpretation of the archaeological object.
If there are any much-older examples of an astrological dodecahedron in this style (ideally, with knobs on), that might be an interesting and arguably linked purpose.
Agree, I was just pointing out that the number 12, if significant, could represent a multitude of things. I don’t think the dodecahedron are associated with Christianity but sometimes fringe groups (for example, Christian Romans) might be the ones most likely to display symbols of their beliefs.
Has anyone found any correlations between the dodecahedrons and commonly found weapons? Are all the dodecahedrons the same size?
No, they can be quite different.
The dodecahedrons are often fist-sized yet can vary in height from about 1.5 to 4.5 inches (4 to 11 centimeters) . The size of the holes also varies, from 0.2 to 1.5 inches (6 to 40 millimeters).
Well, if they’re not standardized, I don’t think they were used as gauges for anything.
Taper gauges wouldn’t need to be standardised if their purpose was to ensure a fit between, say, somewhat-mass-produced spearheads and somewhat-mass-produced wooden poles, locally - that is, the blacksmith is making spearheads to conform to a positive taper-form that matches one of the pairs of opposite holes in the dodecahedron-taper-gauge, that the woodworker uses when whittling the poles. The result only needs to be locally standard.
Except with this explanation, like all the other practical-object explanations, it doesn’t fit some of the examples where the holes really don’t look like they are part of a taper gauge, and it doesn’t explain the knobs on the corners, or any other aspect of superfluous ornamentation. If you need a taper gauge for making spear shafts, there are way simpler designs.
Or why they’re dodecahedrons. Do you really need six different taper gauges? Is exactly six always the number of taper gauges needed? Even if you do always need six of them, why not six different objects, each of them much simpler than a dodeca?
Yeah, good point - if the purpose of the object was division of labour between the smithy and the woodcutter, then there would probably have been division of labour between the woodcutter making spear shafts and the other one making arrow shafts, so (in a world where a taper gauge existed for that purpose), they would have one each, and it would do one thing.