Ba

bah

egyptian: bꜣ

Definition

The ba (Egyptian bꜣ, plural bau) is the mobile, travelling part of a person — most discussed for the dead, though gods and kings have a ba too. Think of it as the self that can leave the body, move about, and visit the world of the living — the part Egyptian art draws as a small bird with a human head. It is one of several distinct parts of the self, usually distinguished from the akh (the transfigured, shining spirit) and the ka (the life-force). It is often loosely translated "soul," though no English word matches it exactly.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read the ba as the animated, personal manifestation of the dead person — the part that gives them freedom of movement after death, often described as personifying the individual's consciousness and drawn as the human-headed bird. A common reading of the funerary texts has the ba returning to the preserved body, so the dead can both rest in the tomb and roam the sky by day.

In Practice

The ba is one piece of the Egyptian many-part view of the self — the ka (life-force), the ba (the part that travels), the akh (the spirit-light often linked with the stars), the shadow, and the name. The funerary spells work to keep the ba and the corpse joined. The Book of the Dead — the New Kingdom and later collection of spells for the afterlife — gives a whole sequence (its spells 89-91) for binding the ba to the body so it "shall not perish" and "shall not leave its corpse." In the same book the dead person's soul is asked to rise with the sun god Ra into the sky, "setting out in the day bark and mooring in the night bark," and to "mingle with the unweariable stars" — the jxmw-wrD, the stars that rise, cross the sky, and set, distinct from the circumpolar imperishable stars that never set. So the ba is what lets you both lie in the tomb and travel among the stars.

Historical Origin

The ba runs through Egyptian funerary writing from the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, about 2400-2300 BCE) onward. Its soul-and-body-binding spells are translated in Thomas George Allen, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Oriental Institute, 1960), spells 89-91, where the soul is the b'/Ba; the soul-rising-among-the-stars passage is Allen's spell 15. Modern study: Belmonte and Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt; Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts.

Further Reading

  • Thomas George Allen (trans.), The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Oriental Institute Publications LXXXII)
  • Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt
  • R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts