Skip to content
Egyptian Mythology
← The afterlife

Ba

bꜣ

What it is

The mobile, individual part: personality and the capacity to act, shown as a human-headed bird.

What it needs after death

To leave the tomb by day and return to the body at night. If it cannot find its way back, the person is finished.

What “soul” loses

That it MOVES, which the ka does not. Most of what a coffin is designed to do, the false door, the shaft, the painted eyes, is architecture for the ba's daily commute.

The other parts