Courtesy Israel Museum

The Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum, protects and displays the fragile 2000-year-old scrolls found in caves near the Dead Sea. The white roofed building, whose rooms are mostly underground, is designed to resemble the lid of one of the clay jar types in which the scrolls were found. The stark contrast between the black basalt wall, beneath which one enters the museum, and the white structure is intended to express architecturally the conflict between good and evil reflected in the Qumran community’s sectarian writings.