On the second day of his Middle East tour, US President Barack Obama visited
the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on Thursday morning.
At the facility,
he viewed the Dead Sea Scrolls - ancient Jewish parchments discovered in the
West Bank in the 1940s which include secular text dating from the third century
BC to the first century AD.
For many years, only a small number of
scholars were allowed to view the fragments of the scrolls, but access has since
been widened.
A few large pieces of scroll remain on permanent display at
the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
After viewing the scrolls, Obama visited
a technology exposition.