This text, written in Aramaic, appears to be an apocalyptic vision, although not enough of it has survived to clearly determine its genre. The surviving text relates in minute detail an architectural plan of a city of huge proportions. It is rectangular in shape and is surrounded by a very long wall. The city has twelve gates, named after the twelve tribes of Israel. A few manuscripts also include a description of a temple and of the rituals that will be held in it. Although the city is not named in any of the surviving fragments, it is obvious that it is the New Jerusalem that would be built at the end of days. This future utopian city was first described in Ezekiel 40–48, but appears also in several other texts, the best known of which is Revelation 21–22. It is also similar in many ways to the description of the temple in the Temple Scroll, but there are no direct literary links between the two texts, although both elaborate on the description found in Ezekiel.
Plate 318: 4Q554 is 4QNew Jerusalem a 4Q554a is 4QNew Jerusalem b