Joseph made Israel swear to carry his bones out of Egypt; Exodus says Moses took them, and his reputed tomb in Nablus was smashed in 2022

Genesis says Joseph, dying in Egypt, made the children of Israel swear: "ye shall carry up my bones from hence." He was embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt. Exodus 13 says that when Israel left Egypt, "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him; for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel." The Talmud, Sotah 13a, adds that while the people collected plunder, Moses searched for the coffin. Serah, daughter of Asher, the last of her generation, told him the Egyptians had sunk Joseph in a metal casket in the Nile. Moses stood on the bank and called him, and the casket rose. Joshua 24 says the bones were buried at Shechem, in the plot Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor for a hundred pieces of money, and "they became the inheritance of the children of Joseph." A domed building in Nablus is venerated as Joseph's Tomb. The present building dates from an 1868 rebuilding, and no archaeological evidence ties it to Joseph; some Muslims hold it is the tomb of an 18th-century local sheikh^†. After the Oslo Accords Israel kept control of the site. In October 2000 it was handed to Palestinian police and then burned^†. In October 2015 it was set on fire again^†. Before dawn on a Sunday in April 2022, about 100 Palestinians stormed it, smashed the tombstone and set fire to rooms; Defence Minister Benny Gantz said Israel would repair it.