Pilate Stone

In 1961, an Italian team led by Antonio Frova was excavating the theater that Herod the Great built in Caesarea Maritima, the coastal city where the Roman governor of Judea lived. On one of the reused steps appeared a limestone block with Latin letters. Part of the left side was cut off, but what remains is clear: the name of Pontius Pilate and the title of prefect of Judea.

The inscription appears to be the dedication of a building in honor of the emperor Tiberius (the "Tiberieum"). The exact reconstruction of the missing parts is debated among scholars, but the name and the office are not.

Why it matters: before 1961, Pilate was known only from texts — the gospels, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, the philosopher Philo and the Roman Tacitus. The stone is the physical proof that the man who judged Jesus existed and held exactly the office that the New Testament describes, under the government of Tiberius (Luke 3:1).

One detail: the gospels call him "governor" (in Greek, hēgemōn), a general word; the stone shows the official title of the time, praefectus. Later, the title of the governors of Judea became "procurator" — it is the term that Tacitus uses.