When Jacob had made an end of his blessings and predictions he gathered
up his feet into his bed and gave up the ghost, and Joseph caused him to
be embalmed, as was the custom in Egypt. When the days of public
mourning were over (seventy days), Joseph obtained leave from Pharaoh to
absent himself from the kingdom and his government, to bury his father
according to his wish. And he departed in great pomp, with chariots and
horses, together with his brothers and a great number, and deposited the
remains of Jacob in the cave of the field of Machpelah, where Abraham
himself was buried, and then returned to his duties in Egypt.

It is not mentioned in the Scriptures how long Joseph retained his power
as prime minister of Pharaoh, but probably until a new dynasty succeeded
the throne,--the eighteenth as it is supposed, for we are told that a
new king arose who knew not Joseph. He lived to be one hundred and ten
years of age, and when he died his body was embalmed and placed in a
sarcophagus, and ultimately was carried to Canaan and buried with his
fathers, according to the oath or promise he exacted of his brothers.
His last recorded words were a prediction that God would bring the
children of Israel out of Egypt to the land which he sware unto Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. On his deathbed he becomes, like his father, a
prophet. He had foretold his own future elevation when only a youth of
seventeen, though only in the form of a dream, the full purport of which
he did not comprehend; as an old man, about to die, he predicts the
greatest blessing which could happen to his kindred,--their restoration
to the land promised unto Abraham.

Joseph is one of the most interesting characters of the Bible, one of
the most fortunate, and one of the most faultless. He resisted the most
powerful temptations, and there is no recorded act which sullies his