ba,
![Ba hovering over a dead man, from a papyrus of the Book of the Dead; in the British Museum
[Credit: Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum]](http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/53/6153-003-9D9D9D6B.gif "Ba hovering over a dead man, from a papyrus of the Book of the Dead; in the British Museum
[Credit: Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum]")
in ancient Egyptian religion, with the ka and the akh, a principal aspect of the soul; the ba appears in bird form, thus expressing the mobility of the soul after death. Originally written with the sign of the jabiru bird and thought to be an attribute of only the god-king, the ba was later represented by a man-headed hawk, often depicted hovering over the mummies of kings and commoners alike. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)"There's agony in its scanning eye, its tiny
filtering teeth set in that gaping mouth, caught perversely
wide, a universal fellatio, opened to make it look more
than a shark enough; and even science will realize
that it's undead, its "ka" and "ba" fixed and lost
in equal measure, the flow of fluid not even providing
an optical illusion, no "weighing of the heart" beyond
the heartlessness of curiosity, eschatology of display."
- John Kinsella, "Megamouth Shark", 7 March 2011 The New Yorker
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