For the ancient Egyptians, a person possessed many qualities, the most important of which were (1) the body, (2) the ka or vital life force, (3) the ba, (4) the akh or immortal spirit, and (5) the name. The ba was spirit-like, most often depicted, as on this object, as a human-headed bird. Unlike the ka, which came into being at the time of a person's birth, the ba appears to have been more important in the afterlife. The ba could travel with the sun barque across the sky on its daily journey or leave the tomb and visit the world of the living, returning each night to rejoin the deceased. The ba often was present alongside the deceased at his judgment before Osiris.

This fragment from a coffin's base depicts the ba with its wings outspread. Since this piece formed the canopy of an anthropoid coffin where the mummy's head lay, the ba's wings would have symbolically encircled the head, thereby protecting the deceased. The holes in the edges of the wood once held the dowels that locked this section to the coffin's side boards. The heads of two more gods are visible in the lower left and right corners. Their bodies would have continued on the coffin's sides. The decoration on the fragment's outer side has all but disappeared, exposing mud-brick plaster, thickened by straw, instead of the more common white gypsum plaster.

Ba on a Coffin Fragment
(gessoed wood, paint)
Dynasty XXI
(ca. 1070-945 B.C.)
Provenience unknown
Length 33 cm; width 27 cm
ACC. 2983-6551

Excerpted from Reflections of Greatness: Ancient Egypt at The Carnegie Museum of Natural History by Diana Craig Patch.
© 1990 The Board of Trustees, Carnegie Institute.