There’s a room at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that’s more guarded than the rest.

Before visitors walk into the dimly lit room, a security guard explains the necessary precautions: no flash photography, no food, no drink.

And once they go in, they can’t go back out — at least until the tour is over.

When the door opens, they’re hit with a blast of cold, dry, 68 degree air. There’s music playing in low tones.

Softly lit with blue patterned light in the center of the room, large casings line the walls, showcasing fragments from six of the world’s oldest surviving versions of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible.

These antiques are remnants of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they’re held under a large glass frame and lit with two small spotlights.

Visitors mill about slowly, some taking in each display with reverence, some spending more time at one display than others, some speaking in hushed tones to one another — many discussing the monumentality of the documents they’re observing.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit actually extends other parts of the museum, but these areas hold artifacts that will remain undamaged with exposure to light, humidity and fluctuating temperatures.

But museum administrators put the room where the scrolls themselves are kept — six scrolls that are more than 2,000 years old each — under more strict standards.

Although six scrolls have been at the museum since June, the Israeli Antique Authority stopped by Raleigh on Wednesday to replace those scrolls with six new ones.

According to Jonathan Pishney, director of communication for the museum, these six document Genesis 1:18-27 — in which God creates man and sea monsters — and a letter recommending people to follow the text of the Torah, among others.

The exhibit will open again Monday, he said, and the safety precautions will begin again.

The museums where the scrolls are making appearances have to take such precautions because, Pishney said, moving the scrolls from their 2,000-year residency in the caves caused rapid deterioration in their condition.

The documents were originally pieced together by the best way known in the 1950s — by placing them bare on a table and matching the fragments with their counterparts with ungloved hands, keeping them held in place with Scotch tape, according to the museum’s Web site.

Much of the restoration done today is to reverse the damage caused when they were first handled, such as using organic solvents to remove the tape and clean the oils and stains with gentle cleaners, the site said.

“It’s great that they’re here in Raleigh, because now students here will be able to go and see them in person,” Anastasia Astratova, a sophomore in economics, said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

While the museum is doing what it can to preserve the scrolls, they will continue to deteriorate as they are being handled and exposed to different environments. According to Pishney, the scrolls are protected from light and humidity damage as they are transported and shown at the museums.

At the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the separate, HVAC-controlled room reserved for observing the scrolls is kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit and at 50 percent humidity.

The museum has limited exposure to light so that the scrolls are kept at constant conditions and do not deteriorate any further. It is for this reason the museum does not allow flash photography in the exhibit — sudden light would further expedite the darkening process of the scrolls, Pishney said.

The conserved fragments are arranged on acid-free cardboard, arranged with hinges made of Japanese tissue paper, stored in protective boxes in a climate-controlled storeroom and then only brought out for observation, Pishney said. The scrolls are only on display for three month intervals, after which they are switched out for six new scrolls that were previously “resting” in the Israel Antiques Authority Storeroom, according to the Web site.

Because the scrolls’ authors scribed on parchment, and some on papyrus, the brittle condition of the scrolls will only encourage their deterioration in the years to come, Pishney said. It is for this reason that the IAA has taken on the project of digitally photographing each of the 900 texts pieced together from those desert caves in Qumran, he said.

Using space-age technology, Pishney said the digitalization will take over five years to complete. He said this type of photography has already brought new insight into the scrolls — because of infrared light the technique uses, certain letters can be seen that were previously undetected by the naked eye, he said, adding that this has filled many of the gaps in meanings found by previous scholars.

Although the scrolls were written about 1,000 years before the Old Testament as we know it today, they are almost identical in translation to the Old Testament. This caused scholars to speculate as to how old they truly are, Pishney said.

Scientists have been able to date the documents by Carbon-14 dating, where the radioactive decay of the Carbon-14 isotope is measured to determine the age of organic items. This process, combined with paleography — the study of the evolution of handwriting — have done well to date the scrolls to the years between 150 BC to 68 AD.

“It’s amazing that something so old is that well preserved and can reveal so much about history,” Charlene Thomas, a sophomore in communication media, said.