Ancient civilizations left us a lot of mysteries, over which archaeologists and historians are still racking their brains unsuccessfully. One of them is the Roman dodecahedron - a small object made of bronze, less often of stone or iron, with twelve flat pentagonal faces.
The sizes of the products vary from 4 to 11 centimeters, and the pattern and exterior decoration are completely different. Bronze dodecahedrons are hollow and have circular holes in the center of each face. Holes can be of different sizes and are usually marked with concentric circles. Sometimes there are additional small circles at the corners. The tops of the figures are provided with small balls. There are other varieties of these bronze items - with rounded edges or triangular edges (icosahedrons).
By the beginning of the 21st century, about a hundred of these unusual things were found in the territories that were once part of the northern provinces of the Roman Empire - from England to Hungary and western Italy, but most were found in Germany and France. Roman dodecahedrons date back to the II-III centuries AD.
Nobody knows for what purpose these items were intended. There is no mention of them in historical texts or images of that time. There are various versions of their use: candlesticks, dice, a fortune-telling tool, children's toys, elements of an army standard, some intricate observation devices, or, for example, a blank for knitting gloves for different finger sizes. Among these assumptions, some are indeed noteworthy.
According to one hypothesis, the Roman dodecahedron was used on the battlefield as a rangefinder to calculate the trajectories of projectiles. This could explain the presence of different hole diameters on the pentagonal faces.
Roman dodecahedron found in Bonn, Germany. Photo: Hadley Paul Garland / Flickr
According to another similar version, dodecahedrons served as geodesic and leveling devices. However, none of these assumptions have been backed up by any evidence or exhaustive explanation of how dodecahedrons might have been used for these purposes.
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At least one stone (or molded) dodecahedron with holes but no balls is known. Most of the stone objects do not have cavities. Their faces either do not have images, or are provided with only engraved circles. The number of faces they have is different. They often have two wide edges on opposite sides, and an arbitrary number of smaller edges are formed between them. Stone icosahedrons were designed as fortune-telling or dice.
The dodecahedron was once considered by the Pythagoreans a sacred figure who played an important role in the pictures of the universe and personified the universe or ether (the fifth element of the universe, in addition to the traditional fire, air, water and earth). Iamblichus in his book "On the Pythagorean Life" asserts that Hippasus of Metapontus, who divulged the secret of the dodecahedron to ordinary people, was not only expelled from the Pythagorean community, but a tomb was erected for him during his lifetime "as a sign that they consider their former comrade to have passed away ". When Hippasus died at sea during a shipwreck, everyone decided that this was the result of a curse: “They say that the deity himself was angry with the one who divulged the teachings of Pythagoras.
The Pythagorean school knows the idea that the dodecahedron formed "beams" on which the vault of heaven was erected. In the dialogue "Phaedo" Plato put into the mouth of Socrates a 12-sided (dodecahedral) description of the more perfect heavenly Earth that exists above the Earth of people: "They say that that Earth, if you look at it from above, looks like a ball sewn from twelve pieces of leather." …
Under the apparent influence of Plato's ideas, in the following centuries, philosophers and scientists began to assume that heaven is made of the fifth element "ether" or "quintessence". This tradition can be seen in the illustrations for Johannes Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, which depicts the cosmos as a dodecahedron.
In addition, the dodecahedron was considered the personification of the zodiac with its 12 signs. On the territory of Geneva, a cast lead dodecahedron was found with edges 1.5 centimeters long, covered with silver plates with the names of the zodiac signs in Latin.
German mathematician Benno Artmann in the Mathematical Intelligencer (1993) argued that dodecahedrons symbolized fire. The mineral known to the Greeks, pyrite (FeS2), often forms nodules in the form of a dodecahedron. Pyrite was used to make fire, as its name suggests (in Greek, "pyr" - fire). If you hit the pyrite on the chisel, the sparks formed are not inferior to the flint in length and at the same time "live" longer, lighting tinder more easily. Thus, the association between fire and the dodecahedron could have formed by itself.
In 1907, it was hypothesized that dodecahedrons were candlesticks, since they are stable in any position and have holes of different diameters, which were used depending on the size of the candles. Wax was found inside one Roman dodecahedron, which may support this theory.
Copper alloy dodecahedron fragment found in Yorkshire, England / Creative Commons
An interesting version seems to be that the dodecahedrons served as astronomical measuring instruments, with the help of which the optimal sowing time for winter crops was determined. According to GMC Wagemans, “The dodecahedron was an astronomical measuring device that measured the angle of incidence of sunlight and thus accurately determined one particular day in the spring and one particular day in the fall. The days thus defined, apparently, were of great importance for agriculture. Nevertheless, opponents of this hypothesis note that the use of dodecahedrons as measuring instruments of any kind seems impossible due to their lack of any standardization, since the objects found had different sizes and designs.
The version that claims that dodecahedrons are religious accessories that were used in cult rites by the druids of Britain and Caledonia also remains unproven. Again, there are no written sources or archaeological finds to support this theory. Or maybe this strange object was just a toy or play accessory for legionnaires during military campaigns?
There is an opinion that these items belong not so much to the Roman conquerors as to the culture of local tribes and peoples who have inhabited the listed territories since ancient times. Perhaps there is some kind of direct connection between dodecahedrons and many much more ancient stone balls with regular polyhedra carved on their surface. Such polyhedron balls, dating back to the period between 2500 and 1500 BC, are found in Scotland, Ireland and northern England.
Another find made only added to the mystery of the whole story about the purpose of these items. Some time ago, Benno Artmann discovered a Roman icosahedron (twenty hedron), which was not given due attention and, misclassifying it as a dodecahedron, was sent to storage in a museum basement.
Roman icosahedron found by Benno Artmann / georgehart.com
This artifact shows that many other geometric shapes are yet to be found in the vastness that was once called the Holy Roman Empire. The mystery of the Roman dodecahedron remains unsolved. Now in the historical literature the abbreviation "UGRO" (from the English Unidentified Gallo-Roman Object - unidentified Gallo-Roman object) is used for brevity.
Used materials from the site mistika.temaretik.com