According to Exodus 13, what did Moses carry with him when the Israelites left Egypt?

According to Exodus 13, Moses carried Joseph’s bones when the Israelites left Egypt.

Joseph had made the Israelites swear that they would take his bones with them when God brought them out of Egypt. Centuries later, Moses honored that promise during the departure from Rameses. The detail links the Exodus directly to the earlier Genesis story about Joseph and his family’s arrival in Egypt.

The request reflects Joseph’s confidence that his descendants would eventually leave Egypt and return to the land promised to their ancestors. The bones were later buried at Shechem, according to the Book of Joshua.

Joseph’s bones were not the Ark of the Covenant, which was constructed later in the wilderness. Nor were they Moses’s staff, another prominent object in the Exodus narrative.