Egypt without heeding the oath given to Joseph. But his
trouble was in vain; the coffin was nowhere to be found.
Serah, the daughter of Asher, met Moses, tired and exhausted,
and in answer to her question about the cause of his
weariness, he told her of his fruitless search. Serah took
him to the Nile river, and told him that the leaden coffin
made for Joseph by the Egyptians had been sunk there after
having been scaled up on all sides. The Egyptians had
done this at the instigation and with the help of the magicians,
who, knowing that Israel could not leave the country
without the coffin, had used their arts to put it in a place
whence it could not be removed.[438]

Moses now took Joseph's cup, and he cut four flat pieces
from it, and engraved a lion on one of them, an eagle on the