Fig. 9.−The Ba visiting the mummy on its funeral couch. (From “The Book of the Dead,”)
Fig. 10.−The Ba flying down the shaft of the tomb and bringing offerings to the mummy.
(From “The Book of the Dead.”)
It is otherwise with the first image, which really represents the soul as it was imagined by the Egyptians. We have sculptured figures and drawings ([fig. 9]) showing the little soul perched by the sarcophagus, touching the mummy, and bidding it farewell before rising to the gods.[28] In other scenes the soul is depicted as it comes flying from heaven with the sign of life in its hand, and approaching the grave to visit the mummy; or as flying down This conception of the soul as a kind of bird is noteworthy when compared with the ideas which other nations have formed of it. The Greeks sometimes represented the εἴδωλον, or soul, as a small winged human figure ([fig. 11]); in Roman times it was imagined as a butterfly ([fig. 12]); and in mediæval reliefs and pictures we see it leaving the mouth of the dead man as a child ([fig. 13]), or a little naked man.[29] The latter form recalls that of the Egyptian Ka, although the idea which it embodies reminds one rather of the Ba.
Fig. 11.—The placing of the dead in the tomb by Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep). The small winged figure represents the dead man's soul. (From a lekythos published by M. C. Pottier in his Étude sur les Lecythes Blancs Attiques. The εἴδωλον was usually painted black.)
