In 1445 BCE, at the age of 110, Joseph (son of Jacob) was laid to rest in Egypt. It took 400 years, but eventually his burial shroud was moved to Israel. Today, Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus is recognized as a religious shrine and represents a key Zionist ideal—the return from exile to the Promised Land.

That’s not where Joseph’s journey ended, however. According to author Maxwell Bauman, the Egyptians wrapped the Old Testament prophet in gauze and covered him with an arcane curse. Even after a millennium of golden slumbers, he wasn’t exactly dead. Someday he was fated to rise again.  

That day had finally arrived. A trickle of blood from an American tourist revived the ancient mummy of Canaan. His face was cold, stiff and gray, but for someone who had been dead for thousands of years, he looked pretty darn good. It actually looked like he had just woken from a nap, wrote Bauman.

The undead prophet emerged from his sacred sarcophagus and immediately started grabbing internal organs from luckless sightseers—eyes, intestines, liver—all the important stuff taken from him during the mummification process.

He also nabbed a stomach from a kid taking a dump in a public toilet. After thousands of years of not eating, the Canaanite was starving—he couldn’t wait until the poor boy was done with his business. Later, he shambled to a nearby food truck and devoured a big plate of shawarma. It smelled wonderful and the meat and spices were delicious, he said to himself.

Naturally, all this grisly mayhem caught the attention of the Israeli Police. Unfortunately, Detective Yosef Leib never truly understood what was going on—he didn’t believe in fairytales, after all. “Given the location of the attacks,” he opined, “I have reason to think it was gang activity or a religiously motivated hate crime.”

It was actually archeologist Golda Kohn who figured everything out. She was a woman of science who also believed in ancient scripture. She was the one to stop the mummy’s rampage across Israel. “You are the son of Jacob,” she told him. “This is Israel, the land promised to your father and your ancestors.”

Kohn knew there was a curse lingering in her homeland. She also knew that Joseph’s mummy was the continuation of that curse. “You are safe in the land of your people,” she said finally freeing the prophet from his burden. “Let this restlessness go.”

[The Mummy of Canaan / By Maxwell Bauman / First Printing: October 2019 / ISBN: 9781944866990]