Literature

The Ba was the soul of the deceased, which was thought to leave the physical body upon death in order to join the sun god in the sky. On account of this, it was usually represented as a bird, often with a human head or arms. In order to ensure eternal life, the Ba had to periodically return to the burial chamber to be reunited with the mummy, as only the regular reuniting of body and soul could ensure the deceased's ongoing existence in the afterlife. Ba bird statuettes are among the wooden statues that might accompany a burial in the Late and Ptolemaic Periods. Sometimes they were prepared for attachment to a coffin or other funerary artefacts such as canopic boxes and Ptah Sokar Osiris figures. For other painted representations of Ba birds, cf. S. D'Auria, P. Lacovara, C.H. Roehrig, Mummies and Magic, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1988, fig. 148a and b, p. 199-200.