Cochlearium
kind of spoon for eating snails
A cochlearium (plural cochlearia) was a small Roman spoon with a long tapering handle.
History
Cochlearia have been found in a number of Roman sites from the 4th and 5th centuries CE, including the Thetford and Hoxne Hoards.
The word cochlea literally means spiral or snail shell, leading many to conclude that the spoon was designed so that the handle could be used to extract snails or cockles out of the shell.
The Roman terms cochlearium, cochlear, and cochleare denote a liquid measure of a spoonful. A cochlearium was also a place where snails could be bred for eating.
In modern times, the cochlearium is used by boat bearers in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church to transfer incense from the "boat" (navicula in Latin) to the thurible.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cochlearium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.