What was found. In 1961 an Italian expedition under Antonio Frova, excavating the Roman theater at Caesarea Maritima (the find itself made by team member Maria Teresa Fortuna Canivet), turned up a damaged limestone block (82 × 65 cm) that had been re-used in antiquity as a stair step. Four partial lines of Latin survive: [, ]S TIBERIÉUM / [PONT]IUS PILATUS / [PRAEF]ECTUS IUDA[EA]E, "…Tiberieum… Pontius Pilate… prefect of Judea…": a dedication of a building (a Tiberieum, evidently honoring the emperor Tiberius) by Pilate during his governorship (AD 26–36). Bracketed letters are scholarly restorations of the damaged edges.
Why it matters (and the one correction it made). This is the only known monumental inscription naming Pilate, and contemporary epigraphic confirmation of the governor the Gospels and Josephus describe. For decades it was the only object of any kind bearing his name; a second joined it in 2018, when a copper sealing ring excavated at Herodium back in 1968–69 was cleaned and re-photographed and read, in Greek letters around a wine vessel, ΠΙΛΑΤΟ, "of Pilate." Most scholars think a thin copper ring is unlikely to have belonged to the prefect himself and assign it to someone in his administration, so it attests the name and the office rather than the man's own hand; the stone remains the primary witness. It also settled his exact title: praefectus (prefect), where the later Roman historian Tacitus had loosely called him "procurator." The original is held by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (a replica stands at Caesarea). (First publication: A. Frova, "L'iscrizione di Ponzio Pilato a Cesarea," Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo 95, 1961.)
Sources (read live 2026-06-12): search-verified summaries incl. Wikipedia "Pilate stone" (CC BY-SA; used as a sourced pointer), Madain Project "Pilate Inscription Stone," Ministry Magazine "Pontius Pilate and the Caesarea Inscription" (1975). Formal reference: Frova 1961.
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