In 1961 a block reused as a step in the theatre at Caesarea Maritima was found to carry a dedication naming him: a fragmentary Latin text of which the surviving words include TIBERIEVM, PONTIVS PILATVS and PRAEFECTVS IVDAEAE. It is the only contemporary inscription of Pontius Pilate known, and it settled a small argument. Tacitus calls him procurator, the title used in his own day for the governors of Judaea after AD 44; the stone shows that in Pilate's own time the office was prefect, a military title. The gospels use neither word — John and the synoptics call him hegemon, governor, which is vague enough to be right either way. Almost no named person of the New Testament outside the Herods has a contemporary inscription; Pilate has one, and Erastus of Corinth may have one, and that is close to the whole list. This dataset records the stone and what it corrected, and does not need it to establish that Pilate existed, which was never in doubt.
Jewish Antiquities