What is the soul in ancient Egypt: the ka, the ba and the akh?

Ancient Egyptians did not speak of one soul but of several parts of a person. The ka was the life force, born with each person and fed after death by offerings at the tomb. The ba, shown as a bird with a human head, was the person’s character and power to move, able to leave the tomb by day. The akh was the shining spirit the blessed dead became. The name, the shadow and the heart were parts of a person too.

The ka, the life force: The ka was born with each person: temple scenes show the god Khnum shaping a royal child and its ka on his potter’s wheel. After death it lived on, but it needed food and drink, so offerings at the tomb were made “for the ka” of the dead. Its sign is a pair of raised arms.
The ba, free to come and go: The ba is often explained as the personality: what made each person who they were, with the power to move. It is drawn as a bird with a human head. After death it could fly out of the tomb by day, into the sunlight and the world of the living, and come back to the body at night.
The akh, the transfigured spirit: The akh was what the dead hoped to become after a proper burial and a good verdict: an “effective” spirit, full of light, at home among the gods and the stars. It is written with the sign of a crested ibis. The living believed an akh could still help or harm them, and some wrote letters to dead relatives.
The name, the shadow and the heart: The name (Egyptian ren) kept a person alive for as long as it was spoken and written, so names were carved on tombs, and erasing one was an attack on its owner. The shadow (shut), drawn as a black figure, could leave the tomb with the ba. The heart (ib) held thought, memory and conscience, and was weighed at the judgment.
How Gerald Massey read the souls in 1907: Massey counts seven souls: the Khabit or dark shade, the Ba or light shade, the breathing heart, the Sekhem (power), the Sahu (the spirit body), the Khu (his spelling of akh) and the Ka. He reads them as seven ascending stages through which the dead grow in Amenta, his name for the world below, up to the Ka, in which all the others are united at last. The Ka, he argues, is more than a ghostly double: born with the child, it attends the person through life and stays an ideal ahead of them. He traces the seven back to seven powers of nature in older myth.
What scholars say now: Egyptologists hold that the ka was born with a person and fed by offerings, and many now call it the life force rather than the “double” of older books, a word Massey also found too narrow. They do not accept a fixed set of seven, or his order with the ka highest: in the texts, the dead become akhs. These were aspects of one person, not separate souls; their number and roles vary across texts and periods, and none matches the single “soul” of later religions. His link between the seven and powers of nature belongs to his own scheme.
In Massey’s words: “In its next stage the soul is called a Ba, and is represented as a hawk with a human head, to show that the nature of the soul is human still.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book IV, p. 201)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Ba. In the app, the Symbol Trainer explains the ka, the ba and the akh, each with Massey’s own words, and Book IV gives his account of the seven souls with a plain-words note under every part.

Last updated November 2, 2026.

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