Archaeologists Found a 2,000-Year-Old Ring With Pontius Pilate’s Name on It. That Wasn’t Even the Weird Part.

4 min readHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:A copper alloy insignia ring from the first century B.C.E., discovered at the ancient fortress of Herodium, was inscribed with the name of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.Pilate’s name was transliterated from Latin to Greek, with his name spelled in a way that was highly unusual.Researchers think that the transliterated spelling of Pilate’s name may mean the ring actually belonged to a low-ranking employee who used it to stamp materials belonging to him.In the ruins of the deserted palace and fortress at Herodium, among the rubble of what used to be a courtyard, a humble copper ring waited nearly 2,000 years to be rediscovered. Hebrew University archaeologist Gideon Foerster’s team pulled the copper alloy ring from the site, about eight miles southeast of Jerusalem, during the 1968–1969 excavation season. At the time, it seemed like just one unremarkable find among hundreds of others. The relic, dated to the first century BCE, is engraved with the image of a calyx krater, along with the name of the infamous Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, written in Greek letters. Some thought it might have actually been worn by Pilate himself. Others remained skeptical.This signet ring was rather poorly made, and its inscription was transliterated from Latin to Greek. So it didn’t seem like a luxury item befitting the governor of Judea—but then why did it bear his name? Recently, Catherine Bonesho, a professor of ancient Judaism at UCLA, examined the ring more closely and decoded the ancient mystery. Things can be lost in both translation and transliteration. The engraving was initially thought to mean that the ring belonged to Pilate, or possibly to one of his high-ranking officials, with another group of archaeologists arguing that the insignia might have meant something completely different in Greek and therefore had nothing to do with Pilate at all. Bonesho now thinks the ring was actually worn by a servant or former slave who worked for the governor’s men. Because Greek was spoken far more widely than Latin in the region where the ring was made, a Latin word was spelled out in Greek letters, creating a hybrid that’s long been considered to be a misspelling.“Local elite(s) [probably] commissioned the ring for an enslaved worker to use at Herodium for various tasks related to Pilate’s administration,” Bonesho said in a study recently published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly. “This reconstruction plausibly accounts for the ring’s features and has the potential to illuminate the quotidian administration of Roman Judea.”Neglected in storage until 2018, when it was properly cleaned and its engravings became visible, the ring shows Greek letters spelling out ΠΙΛΑΤΟ (PILATO) on either side of the calyx image, apparently meant to be read clockwise due to the lack of space on its bezel. “ΠΙ” or “PI” is inscribed on the right while “ΛΑΤΟ” or “LATO” is on the left. This must have been necessary because the calyx image was stamped onto the bezel before the inscription was made. Next to the ΠΙ is the faint marking of what appears to be a Λ, or lambda, possibly from drafting. After the maker determined that there wasn’t enough space, the lambda was moved to the other side. But that’s the least of the inscription’s problems. If ΠΙΛΑΤΟ really is supposed to be the Greek form of the Latin Pilatus, Bonesho is convinced that the name should be written in a nominative form like ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ (PILATOS).To signal that the ring belonged to Pilate or one of his officials, an engraver could have chosen either the genitive ΠΙΛΑΤΟΥ (PILATOU), “belonging to Pilate,” or the dative ΠΙΛΑΤΩ, “for Pilate.” The ending of an O or omicron is what makes this ring so unusual. There’s no known Greek form of Pilate’s name spelled this way, and it’s unlikely that the inscription lacks an ypsilon (Υ) because the inscriber ran out of room, abbreviated, or misspelled it. Abbreviations are common in Greek and Latin, but unlike this ring, they include only the first few letters of a name or take away the entire case that ends it. However, there’s another explanation of the inscription’s meaning that actually makes sense.Bonesho sees ΠΙΛΑΤΟ as having been transliterated from the Latin dative form of PILATO. If that was the intent, the inscription was meant for objects stamped by the ring—not to indicate that Pilate wore the ring himself. Transliteration of Latin into Greek and Greek into Latin was common during this period in Roman Judea. Sometimes, Latin was transliterated because, with Greek as a more common language, whoever was inscribing a word or name was unfamiliar with Latin script. It might have also been that PILATO was transliterated into Greek because of the prevalence of Greek speakers (many of whom did not understand Latin) in the region. So the inscription was meant to be easily understood. The ring’s wearer was probably a Judean employed by Pilate’s administration to stamp crates, jars, and documents to show that they belonged to the prefect.“The Greek transliteration of the Latin form PILATO reflects not just a connection with the Roman administration and the prefect Pilate himself, but also the interactions of that administration with locals,” said Bonesho, “Whether it be the local elites performing work for the administration, their (formerly) enslaved workers, or the craftsmen of a Jerusalem workshop.”Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.