Ba statue

Headless ba statue carved from a single compact block of sandstone. It has spread wings on the back, the left arm at its side and is dressed in a long, pleated skirt. The right arm is missing, but it may have been stretched forward, holding an offering the open palm. These are called ba statues because of their relation to the image of the souls of the dead in Egypt, the ba bird with a human head, which leaves the body after death and returns to it after mummification. Once turned into stone, the ba allows the deceased to have an earthly representation in the afterlife. Ba statues are exclusively found in the Meroitic necropoles of Lower Nubia, and this one in particular was discovered in the surface layers of the Meroitic necropolis of Nag Gamus (Masmas, Egyptian Nubia) by the Spanish Archaeological Mission of the mid-’60s.