One of my engineering friends devoted a large portion of his life studying the dodecahedron. He believed it was used as a "fluid scanner" to measure the displacement of 3d objects using water.
Oh man, that brings back memories. Roman System Engineering a.k.a. "TimeCube with Tits"! They still have the original promo 'marketing' on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/29490154
Did anything ever come of it? The interview has some wild claims.