The Field of Reeds, and the Farmwork of Paradise

Aaru, the "Field of Reeds," is the ancient Egyptian paradise, and its most revealing feature is how earthly it is. It was imagined not as a realm of disembodied bliss but as an idealized mirror of the Nile valley: fertile fields, abundant harvests, flowing water, and the pleasures of the good life continued forever. To reach it the dead had to pass the ordeal of the Duat and the judgement of Osiris, at which the heart was weighed against the feather of Maat (truth); only the "justified" (maa-kheru) entered.

Because paradise was a working landscape, one might be called upon to labour in its fields, and this practical anxiety produced one of Egyptian religion's most characteristic objects: the shabti, a small mummiform figurine placed in the tomb by the dozen or the hundred, inscribed with a spell so that it would answer the call and do the work in the owner's stead. Aaru thus reflects a distinctively Egyptian vision of the afterlife: not escape from the world but its perfection, the familiar life of field and family made eternal and secure, with even its chores anticipated and provided for.