house of the ba

Court of Amen 21

HOUSE of the bA (transliteration).
The incense pot with flame is a hieroglyph to be read bA. Sometimes on
this square both male and female Ba figures are illustrated, each with
a pot of incense and standing atop their tombs.

This bA or "breath soul" is second stage of seven in the Aegyptian
metempsychosis. The symbol combines a human head (often of a deceased
person) with the body and wings of a bird. Freedom of movement is just
one property indicated by this final, and most important, turning square.

"We have every reason to stress this dynamic character of bA, for an
inadequate understanding of it has evidently contributed much to the
understanding of bA as "soul," according to the traditional western
dualistic way of looking at things. A statement such as the following
from the Book of the Dead, your bA belongs to the sky, your
corpse to the netherworld," undeniably could easily be explained
according to this dualistic scheme. And when Plutarch asserts in De
Iside et Osiride that the Egyptians kept the bodies of the gods
amongst themselves, while their souls (psychai) shone as stars in the
sky, we might seem to hear an echo of such a concept. Let us,
however, consider that in a Coffin Text we find the phrase, "your bA
is in the earth, your body is in the netherworld," and in a tomb
text from Dynasty 18, the formula, "your body belongs to the earth,
your bA is in the netherworld."

This warns us against fixing the location of bA. A number of representations of the tomb also illustrate the bA bird on its way from or to the tomb. Dualistic statements of the first type must therefore be balanced by texts and pregnant expressions(114) evoking the union bA–body, which were produced thanks to the mobility and activity of bA. Further, the
circumstance that such corporeal things as food and drink, along with
sexual potency, are so often connected with bA, should have
constituted ample warning against playing body and bA against one
another, as also often occurs in the Egyptological literature.

I will praise God(s) for you,
O foremost one of the temple of Ptah
In the festival of iy-m-Htp before Wsir-nA-nfr-Htp.

I will cause your name to live beside the living bA.
I will divinize your ba before the ba of his divinity.

A Htp-(ti-)nswt to your kA at your altar.
A worshipping of your name before the sacred images.

Come you, o one who lives as a craftsman of Isten [Thoth]
O praised one of the heart of Rah, may he cause that you 'recite'.

May I praise God(s) for you.
May I cause that your name be eternally youthful.
May I cause your ba to enter before my father.

I am with you as an heir like a son of land of the fathers.
May your teaching act as a nursemaid for me.

You have made me a ruler through the raising of the hand of the one who created me, so that I may become an heir of your divine instructions.

O honoured one! Let one cause that my name remain.
Let me enter among the nobles.

Let one place me on the bark of the divine bau (bA's),
The wise ones who are in the setting forth.

May I gather in as a Seer!
May I become like unto a monument {oracle}
So that I become one with the assistants of Thoth.

I have completed the funerary offering
Through pronouncing my name in the darkness,
While I fight with the bas.

May one open for me the path of going-and-coming.
Let me show the way to the hall with my own feet.

I have completed the action of the funerary offering
Through pronouncing my name in the darkness,
While I fight with the bau.

Two more lines are of interest to us:

May one open for me the roads of going to the House of Life,
I will spread myself out on my belly before Shai (Seshat).

The AE Book of Thoth, Jasnow & Zauzich, vol 1, p.111