Obama was miles away in Jerusalem at the time, preparing to visit the Israel Museum.
As the Israel Museum was planning an exhibition featuring the prized find, however, Netzer fell to his death while surveying the site.
Less dramatic, perhaps, but no less significant will be the president's tour of the Israel Museum's treasure, the Shrine of the Book.
The Israel Museum has countered that it is responsible for custodianship of archaeology in the West Bank and that it would return the artefacts to their original site when the exhibition closes.
His wife, a well-known philanthropist, left a number of works from the collection to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where her husband was a founding trustee.
Mr. Carpenter's architectural design work includes the facade of the new 7 World Trade Center tower in New York and the renovation of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, completed in 2010.
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For its part, the Israel Museum avoids judging Herod.
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The President also spent time in Jerusalem today, this morning where he toured the Israel Museum and again in the afternoon, where he delivered remarks to the Israeli people from the Jerusalem International Convention Center.
While visiting Israel with his wife years ago, he decided to collect antique tzedakah boxes, decorated tins used to collect money for charity, and then brought them to the Judaica curator at the Israel Museum.
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When U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Israel on March 20th for an official state visit to the richly historic country, his itinerary will include a visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a stop at the Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a close-up look at a missile defense battery.
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Edelman was born in 1921, according to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum.
After a visit to Israel's national museum where he inspected the Dead Sea Scrolls, which highlight the Jewish people's ancient connection to the land that is now Israel Obama headed to the West Bank to tell the Palestinians that the creation of a Palestinian state remains a priority for his administration.
Obama also visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, and traveled to Sderot, a town in southern Israel that had suffered from missiles fired from inside the nearby Gaza Strip.
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