The Scenes of the bA of Osiris at Ancient Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Tourism Guidance Department, Faculty of Tourism & Hotels, Suez Canal University

Abstract

The bA is an aspect of a human that the ancient Egyptian thought that it would live after the death of the body. It is depicted as a human-headed bird flying away from the tomb to join the kA in the Nether world. Unlike the concept of the soul in other thoughts, the bA is not only a part of the human, but it is the human itself.  At the beginning, the word bA was written with the symbol of the bnw bird. Then it was changed to a human-headed falcon. Humans had one bA while gods have many. The bA usually appeared in the texts that were related to life after death. The Pyramid Texts were the earliest source that mentioned the bA concept. There was no depiction of the bA before the New kingdom, however, some funerary statues date back to the Old kingdom had depiction of bA in totally human form. The first depiction of the bA in the Book of the Dead, was a human-headed bird with other human features referring to both its human nature and  its ability to move from a place to another. The bA of Osiris was depicted many times in temples, tombs and on other monuments. The research aims to study the various representations of the bA of Osiris and to spot light on its functions.

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