Ancient Romans used dice also for divination.
Interestingly, there are references to 20 sided dice used some times. IMHO, the 12 sided ones had more of a special reason to be for the Romans/Gauls on the northern regions.
How about a marker rather than a die, like the doubling cube used in backgammon? It isn’t thrown at all but placed with the proper side uppermost. Of course I’d expect something more distinct than different sized holes on the faces.
What would that reason be? It’s not like the zodiac wasn’t Empire-wide. What’s particular to Gallo-Roman areas that needs a 12-sided object?
I think some progress to deal with that question that is to find first if it was used by the Romans the way the Gauls or druids did use it, instead of being just trophies for the Romans or other conquerors of the northern regions of Europe as I suspect.
One bit that would help is to check if this example in Ireland was found there or if it came from another country (found elsewhere in Europe, brought to Ireland in modern times, or found in Ireland proper).
This is because Rome did not go to Ireland, but the Druids did, mostly fleeing Roman prosecution.
Can any Irish doper check?
INA Irish doper but if you search the Hunt Museum website further it gives the provenance of the object as being part of the foundational collection from John and Gertrude Hunt, who were British antiquarian collectors. If so its been there since the 1970s.
Its presence in Ireland has nothing to do with druids, Celts or Romans and candles and everything to do with a multi-million dollar trade in unprovenanced antiquities. Who knows where it came from, or what hands it went through before it was legitimised by inclusion in a high profile museum.
Thank you…
So, a dead end. Although it shows that the item then is, so far, just related to Romans and Gauls. Not just Gauls/Druids.
Here’s a map of dodecahedron finds through 2021 from @CalMeacham’s 2nd link in post 708:
Nothing in Ireland. There are a number of finds outside of modern day France. I see from wiki that Gaul extended into the Balkans. Didn’t know that. The term “Gaul” indeed appears to characterize the finds. Nothing in Spain either.
The maps are based upon this dataset, also posted by Retzbu_Tox upthread :
Many of the entries list unknown provinance; one says, “Not Ireland”.
On the Roman Dodecahedrons Reddit, there is a post by redditor vacciprata with a translation of archaeologist Michael Guggenberg’s explanation of how dodecahedrons are categorized by type. It contains a lot of information and images of various dodecahedrons.
There is also a list of known dodecahedrons that is easier to read than the previously mentioned Saegewerk list, with six more dodecahedrons at the end, bringing the total to 135.
https://www.reddit.com/r/romandodecahedrons/comments/1hh7007/guggenbergers_list_of_129_gallo_roman/
Sure. And my awkward candle holders that need a plate to protect my table from dropping wax are cultic or religious objects, too. They are also candle holders.
The range of the objects suggests they had some cultural significance, and weren’t just utilitarian. But they probably were used for something, too. Unless they really were just attractive knick knacks, like a lava lamp.
Since they seem to be more specifically Gallo-Roman dodecahedrons, I am curious if l any of them have been found in a more Gallic context, like in a horde of Gallic jewelry, rather than at a Roman military site or in a horde of Roman coins.
AFAIK, they’ve always been found in Roman contexts.
Not so much Gaul extending to the Balkans as a Gaulish people expanding there, and then into Turkey. They became known as the Galatians, to whom S Paul wrote the Epistle to the Galatians.
According to Wiki article on the Galatian language, some personal names included Adiatorīx, Bitorīx, and Olorīx. They’d fit right to Astérix’s little village.
That was his name in his youth in the West that is forgotten.
I must admit, that one guy makes quite a good argument for Gaulish-language cypher encoders.
Yes, he does.
My hypothesis. It’s a trade mark like a blacksmith would hang out a horseshoe. As the Romans expanded into the area of the artifacts, a local metalworker has one of these. The artisans in the legion adopted it to signify that they were the sword, armor, lance … makers. Or the religious officer in the legion (or something similar like the tea leaf reader) might have adopted it as a form of identification. “Seances and Tarot reading here.” The use/manufacturing of these died out as the troops withdrew from the region so it never transferred to the rest of the empire. So - a decorative skill identifier.
To expand on this - it gives a good use for the knobs without them needing to undergo too much force or tension, explains why sometimes they seem to be made to go on a shaft but not always, and why such a range of sizes. If the hole sizes are strictly a unique-to-each-one way of keeping track of each face rather than having to do with actual measuring anything, that also jibes with the great variations in ratios and lack of standardization. The 20 Gaulish letters->vertices relationship also is an explanation for why just this shape, just this area.
And, it makes it related to a similar item whose use is understood elsewhere. And explains why the form is different in different parts of the empire.
It’s certainly a better explanation than most. My main objections would be two: First, even if it’s secret, the method for using it would still need to be written down somewhere. You can’t count on just training all of your comms officers by oral tradition, and then expecting all of them to just remember all of it. And this becomes more true, the rarer this method is. Sure, soldiers would have standing orders to destroy all of these manuals the moment it looked like there was a chance of losing control of them, but every war in history has involved codebooks getting captured occasionally.
Second, this use makes it vitally important to be able to tell one knob from another, and the only way to do that is by the faces which are adjacent to each knob. But not all of the examples have distinct faces, and even on the ones that do, sometimes the differences are very subtle, and they’re not all arranged the same way. If these are used to encode messages, they must be consistent in their markings, or else your recipient won’t be able to decode the message.