Queries & Comments

Pontius Pilate Inscription

To the Editor:

The May/June BAR carried an interesting photo of a stone found at Caesarea Maritima, bearing a damaged Latin inscription which was translated: “PONTIUS PILATE, THE PREFECT OF JUDEA, HAS DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF CAESAREA A TEMPLE IN HONOR OF TIBERIUS”: the underlined words, or parts of words, are translations of the Latin words shown in the picture, but everything else is not represented on the stone by even one Latin letter.

It would be interesting if you could inform us if most of the translation is just an educated guess, or if perhaps the entire inscription is known from another source.

Robert Bull replies:

Msgr. McLees’s surmise that part of the translation given in BAR is an educated guess is correct. That guess is based on what looks to some of us like the remains of the letter “S” found just before TIBERIEUM in the first line of the inscription from Caesarea.

I record the inscription as follows:

1. [———] S Tiberieum
2. [. Po]ntius Pilatus
3. [praef]ectus Iuda[ea]e
4. [didit dedicavit]