Roman governor of Judaea, in office roughly 26–36 CE, under whom Jesus was executed — the only person besides Jesus and Mary named in the Christian creeds. Matthew calls him hēgemōn, a general word for a ruling official; ⚠ his actual title is now known from an inscription, the Pilate Stone, found reused in the theatre at Caesarea Maritima in 1961, which gives it as PRAEFECTUS rather than the procurator of later tradition. He is also attested by Josephus, by Philo — who describes him in strongly hostile terms as inflexible and given to executions without trial — and by Tacitus. ⚠ That external picture sits awkwardly beside the Gospels’ reluctant Pilate, and the tension is worth stating rather than resolving: a governor who crucified people readily is not obviously the man who washes his hands, and the narrative interest of each source is easy to see. Coins struck under him carry Roman cultic implements, which Jewish coinage in Judaea otherwise avoided. Nothing certain is known of his end; Eusebius reports a tradition that he was removed and later killed himself, and the several surviving ‘Acts of Pilate’ are much later Christian compositions. ⚠ WHERE he judged is a live archaeological question, and it bears directly on Matthew 27. The traditional site is the Antonia fortress beside the temple — which is why the Via Dolorosa starts there — but a scholarly consensus reported by Shimon Gibson holds that the PRAETORIUM of Mark 15:16 and Matthew 27:27 was rather HEROD’S PALACE on the WESTERN side of the city, the seat of government where a visiting Roman prefect would naturally stay. Excavations along the Old City’s western wall in 1973–78, directed by Magen Broshi, uncovered a gate complex with a stone pavement and, on the upper pavement, a small stepped platform — a BEMA, which is the Greek word Matthew uses at 27:19 for the seat Pilate is sitting on when his wife’s message arrives, and the word John 19:13 pairs with the Aramaic name GABBATHA, the Stone Pavement. ⚠ The identification is an interpretation and not a demonstration: no inscription names the place, Matthew never uses the name Gabbatha at all, and the bema stone itself has been found toppled out of position. The library records a well-argued candidate, not a settled fact.