The ka is one of the five essential parts of the individual, which included the the ba, the akh, the name, and the shewet (shadow). It is the nearly indefineable life force, that which differentiates the dead from the living. Sometimes it is translated as "sustenance" and is often equated with the very food left as an offering for the ka. The ka was believed to survive the death of the body, and to require feeding as the body did in life. Thus the offerings of real food, or even symbolic food to the ka. Sometimes the offering could be the symbol of the ka itself, two up raised arms. It wasn't believed that the ka needed to eat but that it sustained itself from the 'essence' of the food - in a sense from the ka of the food, called the kaw. The ka of a person could be represented by a smaller figure of the person, perhaps with the ka sign on his head. However each statue of the deceased was a representation of the ka. It was the reuniting of the ba and ka in the netherworld that transformed the person into the akh, "one of the blessed dead". The ka was sometimes shown being created on the potters wheel by the creator god Khnum along with the physical body, a sort of spiritual double.