Israel Museum

Israel Museum

The Israel Museum is a modern large-scale building with a vast area, encompassing the Bible Lands Museum and an art garden. The museum features a highly distinctive design, resembling a giant gourd-shaped roof, with most of the main structures located underground. It houses numerous outstanding modern sculptures as well as many priceless religious artifacts, the most important of which are the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Hebrew Scriptures. For the general public, the Old Testament may just be a collection of stories; for Christians, it is the Bible; but for Jews, it is their ancestral language and root.

It is said that in 1949, several Arab shepherds searching for lost sheep discovered hand-copied manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures from around the 1st century BCE, left behind by reclusive Jews in a cave on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. This museum is equipped with all modern security and air-conditioning facilities. In order to preserve the exhibits for as long as possible, only a portion are displayed at a time, and all lighting is specially designed. The exhibition rooms are dimly lit, and the reading lights in each display case automatically turn off after a set period. In addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the museum also houses a collection of cultural relics, artworks, and local antiquities representing Jewish traditions from around the world.