The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections, ranging from prehistory through contemporary art, and includes the most extensive holdings of biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world. In just forty years, the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects thanks to a legacy of gifts and the support from its circle of patrons worldwide.
The uncontested stars of the Museum's collection are the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world. Housed in the Shrine of the Book, the scrolls date from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE and include nearly all the books of the Hebrew Bible as well as many other non-canonical texts. The first seven scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd boy in Qumran, near the Dead Sea. Since then, the "Qumran library" has grown and now comprises almost 950 manuscripts. The Shrine of the Book also houses rare early medieval manuscripts of the Bible, an auditorium and an information and study center.
One of the most recent and exciting additions to the Museum is the Second Temple Era model of Jerusalem. The model reconstructs the topography and architectural character of the city as it was prior to 66 CE, the year in which the Great Revolt against the Romans erupted, leading to the eventual destruction of the city and the Temple. Originally constructed on the grounds of Jerusalem's Holyland Hotel, the model is now a permanent feature of the Museum's twenty-acre campus, adjacent to the Shrine of the Book.
