A series of small bronze prutot, 14 to 17mm across, struck in three issues during the prefecture of Pontius Pilate — AD 29, 30, and 31, corresponding to regnal years 16, 17, and 18 of Tiberius. The reverse of every issue carries the Greek date formula LIΣ, LIZ, or LIH inside a wreath. The obverses are what set this coinage apart. The first two issues depict a simpulum — a Roman libation ladle used by pagan priests in sacrificial rites. The third depicts a lituus — the curved augural staff carried by Roman augurs to mark out sacred space and read the flight of birds. Both are explicitly pagan-priestly objects, deliberately and pointedly so. No other Roman prefect of Judea — neither Coponius before Pilate nor Felix and Festus after — placed such imagery on coins minted for circulation in the Jewish heartland. The provincial bronzes of every other prefect carry palms, ears of grain, vine branches, or other neutral agricultural symbols chosen specifically to avoid offense to Jewish iconographic sensibilities. Pilate's deviation is recorded by Josephus and Philo at the level of his administrative style — Philo's Embassy to Gaius names him for his "stubbornness and harsh malignity." Helena Pietzcker's distribution analysis of recovered specimens shows the coins concentrated overwhelmingly in Jerusalem and the Jericho region, not Caesarea Maritima where the prefect actually resided — suggesting they were intentionally circulated into the religious heartland rather than the Romanized administrative coast. These are the coins in the pockets of Jerusalem during the year of the crucifixion. The pilate-issued bronzes were in everyday circulation in AD 30 to 33 — the same prefect, the same year-marks, the same hands. Daniel Schwartz's Anchor Bible Dictionary article on Pilate, Jean-Philippe Fontanille's catalogue of the Pilate coinage, and Hendin's Guide are the standard scholarly references; specimens are held at the Israel Museum, the British Museum, the American Numismatic Society, and the Hecht Museum in Haifa. Sources: Daniel R. Schwartz, "Pontius Pilate" (in Anchor Bible Dictionary vol. 5, Doubleday, 1992); Jean-Philippe Fontanille and Sheldon Lee Gosline, The Coins of Pontius Pilate (Shangri-La, 2001); David Hendin, Guide to Biblical Coins (5th ed., Amphora, 2010); Josephus, Antiquities 18.55–62; Philo, Embassy to Gaius 299–305.
Pilate's prutot are the only coins minted by a Judean prefect bearing explicitly pagan-priestly symbols — the simpulum and lituus — circulated deliberately into Jerusalem during the precise years of his prefecture, making them direct material evidence of Roman-Jewish administrative friction documented independently by Josephus and Philo.