Figure 4: Ba leaving and returning to the tomb, and shadow with phallus. Tomb of Amennakht (TT 218), Deir el-Medina, Ramesside. Altenmüller 1990: 16, fig. 6. Reproduced with the kind permission of Hartwig Altenmüller.

Book of the Dead Spell 188, a spell for sending forth the soul and going forth by day as a man, states: ‘You have blessed me with a (ba)-soul and shadow, so that we may be seen yonder.’ Coffin Texts Spell 413 is a request for the divinisation of the ba and the shadow, again suggesting that these two entities are closely connected in Egyptian thought. The association between the ba and the shadow and their relationship with the corpse in turn may partly explain the sexual aspect of the shadow. There are a few texts in which the word Swt associated with a god describes the sexual power of that deity. The connection between the shadow and the sexual aspect of the deceased may explain why the shadow is depicted with a penis in some vignettes to the Book of the Dead Spell 92, going forth in the day, when the shadow was free to walk the earth at will before returning to the corpse in the evening.

Nicola Harrington, Living With The Dead: Ancestor Worship And Mortuary Ritual in Ancient Egypt, pg 4