A NEW DEAD SEA SCROLLS CENTER is being opened at the Israel Museum underneath the scale-model of Second Temple Jerusalem:

BIG>Jerusalem of old
By SARINA ROSENBERG (Jerusalem Post)

A unique blend of contemporary and ancient, miniature and magnificent sets the scene at the Israel Museum's newest exhibit featuring the Second Temple Era model of Jerusalem it acquired from the Holyland Hotel.

From the site of the Old City replica, now nestled atop Jerusalem's Hill of Tranquility, pristine views of the Knesset, the National Library and Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus form a vivid background to the birds-eye perspective of the ancient Jerusalem depicted in the model.

Yet according to museum officials, it is what is underneath the model's new site that truly brings the Second Temple model to life.

Accompanying the inauguration of the model last week, the Israel Museum opened the multi-building Dorot Foundation Dead Sea Scrolls Information and Study Center, an underground complex and auditorium linking the new acquisition with the museum's Shrine of the Book housing the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Dr. Adolfo Roitman, head of the Shrine of the Book, said the museum designed the study center to connect the Shrine of the Book and the Jerusalem model both physically and conceptually - subterranean study space linking the two exhibits and the ancient communities they represent.

"We want to synchronize these two stories - the story of Jerusalem and the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Roitman told a group of reporters touring the exhibit. "In a way, we are closing the circle opened in the 1950s [with the discovery of the Scrolls]."

[...]