Joseph and the Egyptian Funeral Boat
Last week, we looked at how Joseph appealed to the Egyptian method of burial in order to gain Pharaoh’s permission to bury his father. But how did Joseph manage to get to the land of Canaan with his father’s body?
Historical research shows that Joseph most likely would have taken a special “funerary” boat to the land of Goshen, where he would have then traveled to Canaan by land in order to bury his father. We invite you to look with us at the making of episode 42 and see how iBIBLE brings this historical event to life.
Did you know that the Nile River, which runs through Egypt, is one of the only rivers in the world that flows from south to north? This means that Joseph’s funeral ship would have floated northward toward Canaan just using the river's current. The wind was most likely blowing against them, so they would not have needed to use the sail, either. However, they would have needed to use the sail on their return journey in order to move against the current. Below, you can see Joseph standing on the funeral boat carrying his father’s coffin in iBIBLE Genesis episode 42.
Funerary boats would have been a fairly common sight for Egyptians. Archaeologists have also found several murals and even small models of these boats, some with sails and others without.
The iBIBLE team drew the ship with a single mast compared to the “bi-mast” design of earlier, larger Egyptian ships. Based on the historical timeframe, these newer, sleeker single-mast ships were gaining popularity. Since Joseph was such an authority figure in Egypt, he probably sailed in this type of state-of-the-art funerary boat.
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