Mystical systems
Field of Reeds
Direct answer
Field of Reeds: The Field of Reeds, in Egyptian Aaru, is the paradise of the blessed dead in Egyptian belief, pictured as an ideal stretch of Nile farmland in the realm of Osiris.
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At a glance
- Also called
- aaru, egyptian paradise, sekhet aaru
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Duat, Weighing of the Heart, Osiris, Elysium
The Field of Reeds, in Egyptian Aaru, is the paradise of the blessed dead in Egyptian belief, pictured as an ideal stretch of Nile farmland in the realm of Osiris.
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What is the Field of Reeds?
The Field of Reeds is where a person who has passed the judgement hopes to live for ever. It is the Egyptian countryside made perfect: channels full of water, islands, and fields where the grain grows far taller than in life. The pictures show the dead ploughing, sowing, reaping and paddling a boat, usually with a wife or husband alongside. Paradise, in other words, is the good life the person already knew, without want or failure.
Because fields mean labour, the dead took helpers. Small figures called shabtis were placed in the tomb, inscribed with a spell commanding them to answer when the owner was called up for work on the land, so that the owner could rest.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Death and what follows.
What sets Field of Reeds apart
The Field of Reeds is an afterlife of work. Its blessed dead plough and harvest, and the pictures linger on the tools. What makes it paradise is certainty: the water never fails and the crop never disappoints. The Egyptians saw the catch at once and answered it with the shabti, a substitute labourer, so the hope of rest was added to the hope of plenty. Its place also shifted over time, from the eastern sky of the royal texts to the kingdom of Osiris.
- Egyptian: Sekhet Aaru, field of reeds or rushes
- Earliest mention: the Pyramid Texts, about 2350 BCE
- Key spell: Book of the Dead, spell 110
- Ruler: Osiris, lord of the justified dead
- Helpers: shabti figures, with the spell numbered 6
- Well-known picture: tomb of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina, thirteenth century BCE
Often mistaken for something else: The Duat is the whole hidden country the dead must cross, with its gates and dangers; the Field of Reeds is the safe home at the end of it.
The story behind Field of Reeds
A field of reeds is already named in the Pyramid Texts, about 2350 BCE, as a place in the eastern sky where the king is purified. By the New Kingdom it had become the home of all the justified dead, described and pictured in spell 110 of the Book of the Dead. A well-known painting of it is in the tomb of the craftsman Sennedjem at Deir el-Medina, from the thirteenth century BCE.
Why Field of Reeds matters
It reveals how much the Egyptians loved their ordinary life: their heaven was their own land, improved.
How to read Field of Reeds
In comparing afterlives it is the clearest case of paradise imagined as continuity with life on earth, set against paradises of rest or of vision.
Field of Reeds in practice: an example
A visitor to the tomb of Sennedjem sees him and his wife harvesting flax and wheat in spotless white linen, a picture of what they hoped for.
Where readings of Field of Reeds go wrong
The pictures express a hope held within one religion; they are no report of what follows death.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- aaru, field of reeds egypt, egyptian paradise, sekhet aaru
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is the Field of Reeds?
It is the Egyptian paradise, a perfected version of the Nile valley where those who pass the judgement of the dead live on, farming rich fields in the kingdom of Osiris.
What does Aaru mean?
Aaru is the Egyptian word for reeds or rushes. The full name, Sekhet Aaru, means field of reeds, recalling the reed beds of the Nile delta.
What were shabtis for?
They were small figures buried with the dead to do farm work on the owner's behalf in the afterlife. A spell written on them tells them to answer when the owner is summoned to labour.
