The Mysterious Bronze Objects That Have Baffled Archeologists for Centuries

One August day in 1987, Brian Campbell was refilling the hole left by a tree stump in his yard in Romford, East London, when his shovel struck something metal. He leaned down and pulled the object from the soil, wondering at its strange shape. The object was small—smaller than a tennis ball—and caked with heavy clay. “My first impressions," Campbell tells Mental Floss, "were it was beautifully and skillfully made … probably by a blacksmith as a measuring tool of sorts.”

Campbell placed the artifact on his kitchen windowsill, where it sat for the next 10 or so years. Then, he visited the Roman fort and archeological park in Saalburg, Germany—and there, in a glass display case, was an almost identical object. He realized that his garden surprise was a Roman dodecahedron: a 12-sided metal mystery that has baffled archeologists for centuries. Although dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of explanations have been offered to account for the dodecahedrons, no one is certain just what they were used for.

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Rüdiger Schwartz/Saalburg Roman Fort Archaeological Park

A dodecahedron at the Saalburg Roman Fort Archaeological Park.

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Mysterious object used by The Roman, The dodecahedron

Roman dodecahedron is a small hollow object made of bronze or stone, with a dodecahedral shape: twelve flat pentagonal faces, each face having a circular hole of varying diameter in the middle, the holes connecting to the hollow center. Roman dodecahedra date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD.

About a hundred of these dodecahedra have been found from Wales to Hungary and Spain and to the east of Italy, with most found in Germany and France. Ranging from 4 to 11 centimetres (1.6 to 4.3 in) in size, they also vary in terms of textures. Most are made of bronze but some are made of stone

. A Roman icosahedron has also come to light after having long been misclassified as a dodecahedron. This icosahedron was excavated near Arloff in Germany and is currently on display in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn.

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Dragon wrote:. Although dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of explanations have been offered to account for the dodecahedrons, no one is certain just what they were used for.

Ooh interesting, i'm looking at it and wondering what it could've been used for

Looks like it would've held something together.hmmm

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Kleon3 - Own work

Two ancient Roman bronze dodecahedrons and an icosahedron (3rd c. AD) in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany. The dodecahedrons were excavated in Bonn and Frechen-Bachem; the icosahedron in Arloff.

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Twenty-sided die (icosahedron) with faces inscribed with Greek letters

A number of polyhedral dice made in various materials have survived from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, usually from ancient Egypt when known. Several are in the Egyptian or Greek and Roman collections at the Museum. The icosahedron – 20-sided polyhedron – is frequent. Most often each face of the die is inscribed with a number in Greek and/or Latin up to the number of faces on the polyhedron.

Nothing specific about the use of these polyhedra is preserved, so theories are built on clues provided by some variant examples.

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the polyhedron might have been thrown in order to determine a god who might assist the practitioner.

Indeed, even the dice with simple letters might relate to divination: a Greek oracle book composed in in the 2nd or 3rd century AD refers to throwing lots to obtain a number that would, through certain algorithms, lead to ready-prepared oracle questions and responses.

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