So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old
The exact age assigned him by Polyhistor F24, from Demetrius an Heathen. The Jewish writers F25 say, that he died the first of the twelve patriarchs, though he was the youngest of them; he died, according to Bishop Usher F26, in the year of the world 2369, and before Christ 1635:
and they embalmed him;
his servants, the physicians, according to the manner of the Egyptians, and as his father Jacob had been embalmed, (See Gill on Genesis 50:2),
and he was put into a coffin in Egypt;
in an ark or chest, very probably into such an one in which the Egyptians had used to put dead bodies when embalmed; which Herodotus F1 calls a (yhka) , or chest, and which they set up against a wall: in what part of Egypt this coffin was put is not certain, it was most likely in Goshen, and in the care and custody of some of Joseph's posterity; so Leo Africanus says F2, that he was buried in Fioum, the same with the Heracleotic nome, supposed to be Goshen; (See Gill on Genesis 47:11), and was dug up by Moses, when the children of Israel departed. The Targum of Jonathan says, it was sunk in the midst of the Nile of Egypt; and an Arabic writer F3 says, the corpse of Joseph was put into a marble coffin, and cast into the Nile: the same thing is said in the Talmud {d}, from whence the story seems to be taken, and where the coffin is said to be a molten one, either of iron or brass; which might arise, as Bishop Patrick observes, from a mistake of the place where such bodies were laid; which were let down into deep wells or vaults, and put into a cave at the bottom of those wells, some of which were not far from the river Nile; and such places have been searched for mummies in late times, where they have been found, and the coffins and clothes sound and incorrupt. And so some of the Jewish writers say F5 he was buried on the banks of the river Sihor, that is, the Nile; but others F6 say he was buried in the sepulchre of the kings, which is much more likely.