A Migrant Dies in Egypt: Jacob's Spectacular Repatriation to His Family Tomb

This chapter will enhance understanding of African deathways based on migrant deathwork across borders in repatriationscapes studies. "Repatriationscapes" in my doctoral research refers to the spaces—physical, geographical, and emotional—through which a migrant's body is returned home. I conducted interviews with 21st-century migrants from Africa to the United Kingdom. I also used textual sources, including Genesis (49; 50), which describe the repatriation of Jacob's body from Egypt to Canaan. Jacob, displaced by famine like many African refugees today, sought refuge in Egypt, where his son Joseph held political influence. As he neared death, Jacob instructed Joseph to bury him in Canaan alongside his ancestors, emphasising repatriation as a profound act of belonging, tradition, and posthumous reunion with his lineage. Indeed, Genesis (49:33) describes Jacob's moment of death in ancestral terms: "he breathed his last breath and was gathered to his people." Only later in Israel's history did tensions evolve between monotheism and ancestral veneration. Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers presents Jacob's funeral as a grand procession with an ambassadorial role for Egypt. Jacob's high-status funerary treatment in Egypt positioned his death—and his people—at the heart of Egyptian death politics.