Ba
A bird with a human head: the ba, usually translated soul, the part of a person that could leave the tomb.
Meaning
Petrie gives its meaning as the human soul. Budge describes the amulet of the soul, made of gold inlaid with precious stones in the form of a human-headed hawk and placed on the breast of the dead, so that the soul could unite with the mummified body and be with its spirit at will.
Not quite a soul
The Global Egyptian Museum calls ba an untranslatable word. In Egyptian texts the ba had bodily needs, so it is not the same as the soul of other traditions; it was the non-physical, freely moving side of a person, beside the ka, the life force. It was the ba that let the dead leave the tomb, to worship the rising sun, rest in the shade of a tree or drink water from a pond, and funerary spells let the dead take any shape they wanted. It was usually drawn as a bird with a human head, sometimes with human arms.
Which bird
Budge describes the bird as a hawk. Petrie thought the image was probably derived from a large-faced owl that lived in tombs. The Global Egyptian Museum starts from the Egyptians’ own view of birds: swift birds such as swallows were taken for ba’s, and so were migratory birds, which crossed the border between Egypt and the world beyond. A text in a temple at Abydos says that outside the created world migratory birds had human heads, and turned into real birds when they came into the light of the sun.
In Tutankhamun’s tomb
A statuette of Tutankhamun lying on a funerary bed (Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 60720) has a falcon and a human-headed bird spreading their wings over him: Horus, and the king’s ba. A golden ba bird lay among the trappings over the first bandages of his mummy (JE 60673).
Write in hieroglyphs
stringmash.comHieroglyphics translatorSpell a name in Egyptian hieroglyphs, letter by letter, and put it in a cartouche.Read next
See also
Eye of Horus, Scarab, Djed pillar, Was sceptre, Shen ring, Cartouche.
Sources
- Amulets, illustrated by the Egyptian collection in University College, London, W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1914, Constable and Company, London (Internet Archive), No. 28
- Egyptian Magic, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1901, Internet Archive (Getty Research Institute copy), Amulet 9
- Ba, Global Egyptian Museum glossary, The Global Egyptian Museum, Glossary: Ba
- Statuette of Tutankhamun on a Funerary Bed, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 60720, The Global Egyptian Museum, Description
- Trappings of King Tutankhamun's Mummy, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 60673, The Global Egyptian Museum, Description
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 3, 2026. How we research
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