That's not what people wanted. The Pilate stone records the existence of a person named Pilatus. We infer that this was Pontius Pilatus, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that.

But it does nothing to confirm a Biblical narrative. Calling it "satisfying evidence" is similar to picking a fight with someone, losing as badly as you can imagine, and then issuing a press release afterwards to the effect that that outcome was what you wanted all along.

By contrast, a major controversy arising from Mesopotamian archaeology was the discovery of the Mesopotamian flood myth, which severely undermined the Bible by being the obvious source of the myth of Noah while contradicting it in pretty much every particular. That's the kind of thing that destroyed popular interest in Mesopotamian archaeology.

> Large parts of Rome's empire were civilized, not by Rome, but by Carthage and the Phoenicians.

That’s more than a claim that that the Carthaginians held overlordship of southern and eastern Iberia.

Fair point about the before and after Caeser. The historical record is pretty clear that enormous volumes of Gauls died during their “civilization” at the hands of Rome.

It’s true that populations that have already been brutalized into an empire are easier to absorb by other empires. I guess I was responding to the language you were using that (to me) presumes that being smashed down and genocided into the murky doublethink of empire is a net positive for the cultures being rapaciously absorbed against their will.