Ba (bꜣ)
Personality — bird of the soul
Ba — the personality, the unique character of the individual, depicted as a human-headed bird (the iconography emphasises that the ba retains the face of the deceased). The ba can leave the body and travel — at night to the realm of the dead, by day back to the tomb to receive offerings. Its survival presupposes both an intact khat to return to and a functioning ka to nourish.
Point 3 of 9 in Egyptian Nine-Part Soul
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Book of the Dead, Spell 89 ('the ba alighting upon the body') (primary_canonical)
Faulkner's Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Spell 89, 'The spell for causing the ba to be united with the body,' is the precise funerary locus for the ba's return or reunion with the deceased's body; it does not by itself establish a universal nine-part taxonomy.
Louis V. Žabkar, A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts (secondary)