60 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniathe soul is imprisoned in the earthly tabernacle of the body, the
intelligence is deprived of the robe of fire in which it should be
clothed, its brightness is dimmed, and its purity is sullied. The
death of the body releases it from its prison-house; it once more
soars to heaven and becomes a spirit (¥±wº...Ω), while the soul is
[063] carried to the hall of judgment, there to be awarded punishment
or happiness in accordance with its deserts.^30 The Khu, in other
words, is a spark of that divine intelligence which pervades the
world and to which it must return; the Ba is the individual soul
which has to answer after death for the deeds committed in the
body.
The plover was the bird usually chosen to represent the Ba,
but at times the place of the plover is taken by the hawk, the
symbol of Horus and the solar gods. That the soul should have
been likened to a bird is natural, and we meet with the same or
similar symbolism among other peoples. Like the bird, it flew
between earth and heaven, untrammelled by the body to which
it had once been joined. From time to time it visited its mummy;
at other times it dwelt with the gods above. Now and again, so
the inscriptions tell us, it alighted on the boughs of the garden it
had made for itself in life, cooling itself under the sycamores and
eating their fruits. For the Ba was no more immaterial than the
Ka; it, too, needed meat and drink for its sustenance, and looked
to its relatives and descendants to furnish them.
But, as Professor Maspero^31 has pointed out, there was a
very real and fundamental difference between the idea of the Ka
or double, and that of the Ba or soul. The Ka was originally
nourished on the actual offerings that were placed in the tomb
of the dead man; it passed into it through the false door and
consumed the food that it found there. But the soul had ascended
to the gods in heaven; it lived in the light of day, not in the
darkness of the tomb; and it is doubtful if it was ever supposed
(^30) Hermes Trismeg.,Pœmandres, ed. Parthey, chs. i. and x.
(^31) Études de Mythologie, i. p. 166.