Day 18 - The Dead Sea Scrolls

Today’s tour took us to the Israel Museum. You could literally spend days here and still not see everything. We had two hours and managed two exhibits. One was a scale model of what Old Jerusalem most likely look like 2,000 years ago. The model is continually being updated as new information from digs etc. is gathered.

A Panarama of the scale model (now not to scale as I used the Panarama setting on my phone)

The second Jewish Temple in the foreground

And this is King Herod's Palace

After this we went to a special exhibit housing the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are seven scrolls in total and they are over 2,300 years old. They do not allow photography in this exhibit so Google to the rescue

This photo, of course does not do the exhibit justice. The room where the scrolls are mimic the cave they were found, and several of the scrolls are on display there.

The rest of the day was free from the tour, so I took advantage and went to the Christian Quarter of the Old City and saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This church was build on the site where Jesus was believed to have been crucified. Unfortunately I was wearing shorts and was not allowed in the Church, but here is what the outside looks like

And this is as close as I got to the inside

The rest of the day was just relaxing and then a great dinner in a area called "the station". After dinner we walked home