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The Ba in Ancient Egyptian Culture

The Ba depicted as a bird with a human head.

The image on this coffin canopy in Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt represents the ba, which was a spirit-like quality Egyptians believed all people possessed.

The ba is most often depicted as a human-headed bird.  A person’s ba was considered important in the afterlife, where it could visit the world of the living during the day and return to the world of the deceased at night.

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