by Faun Rice
prepare for a ritual battle which is always fought along the banks of a river that
represents the official border between the two divisions of the country.
The candidate marches up, surrounded by the Ororo, who are his body-
guards but at the same time the symbols of his mortality. He proceeds north
toward Fashoda sitting backward on an ox, which is led by its tail, and alongside
a heifer, also walking backward. Nyikang dispatches messengers to mock him.
Before crossing the river, he and the girl step over a sheep, then a black bull,
before crossing the river, thus consecrating them for sacrifice. It is said in earlier
days he used to step over an old man who was then trampled by the people after
him, usually, to death. The two forces proceed to do battle, each side unleash-
ing a volley of millet stalks in lieu of spears. Nyikang’s followers, however, are
also armed with whips, reputed to be so powerful that a direct blow could cause
madness. As a result, the southern forces are put to rout, and at the height of
the battle, the bearers of Nyikang and Dak sweep forward and surround the
reth-elect, carrying him off as prisoner to Fashoda, together with the “girl of the
ceremonies.”
On their arrival, the heifer is ritually sacrificed.
Once in the capital, however, the two figures begin to fuse. Nyikang’s sacred
stool is taken from his shrine; a white canopy is arranged around it, and the ef-
figies and their captives are brought inside. First, Nyikang is first placed on the
throne, then removed and replaced with the reth-elect. He begins to tremble,
and exhibit signs of possession—the soul of Nyikang, it is said, has left the effigy
and entered the king. He’s doused with cold water. At this point the effigies re-
treat to their shrine, and the reth is revealed to the assembled people, as his wives
(newly transferred from the harem of the previous king) warm water for a ritual
bath while he sits “like a graven image on the chair” (Munro 1918: 546), himself
now an effigy, and later is led out before the assembled people. In one case, at
least, observers remarked he seemed visibly in trance. After the sacrifice of an
ox, he is led to a temporary “camp” just opposite the shrine, where he is bathed
in great secrecy, with water alternately warm and cool, to express the desire that
he “rule with an even temper” and avoid extremes (P. P. Howell and Thomson
1946: 64). This bath is part of a broader process of communion with the spirit of
Nyikang, which was considered arcane knowledge about which outsiders should
know little, but according to some, the reth spent many hours of contemplation
as the soul passed fully into him.
The transfer of Nyikang’s soul marks the new reth’s last public appearance
for at least three days. Afterwards, the king remains in seclusion, guarded only
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115
by some Ororo and a few of his own retainers. Once again, he is treated like a
boy, expected to tend a small herd of cattle, and accompanied only by his be-
trothed child bride. At some point, though, adult sexuality intervenes. An Ororo
woman (in some versions, there are three of them) lures the king away to the
shrines on the mound of Aturwic in Fashoda and seduces him;46 while he is thus
distracted, Nyikang steals out from another of the shrines and kidnaps the “girl
of the ceremonies.” On the king’s return, he discovers her gone and, pretending
outrage, begins searching everywhere. On finally realizing what’s happened, he
confronts the chief of Kwa Nyikwom (who is acting as Nyikang’s spokesman),
explaining that the girl had been properly betrothed by a payment in cattle, and
Nyikang had no right to her. The chief, however, insists that the herds used—
which are, after all, the old reth’s herds—are really Nyikang’s.
Finally it comes down to another contest of arms. Both sides marshal their
forces in Fashoda. This time, Nyikang is accompanied not only by the ferocious
Dak, but also by his hapless son Cal. A smaller mock battle ensues, but this time
the northerners’ whips prove ineffective. The reth sweeps in and recaptures the
girl from Nyikang; finally, the effigies have to fight their way back into their
own shrines, and negotiate their effective surrender. The girl remains with the
king, who has, in his victory, demonstrated that he and not the effigy is the true
embodiment of Nyikang. At this point the effigies disappear, and do not return
for the remainder of the ceremonies.
At this point, too, the drama is also effectively over. The new reth spends
the next day on his throne at Aturwic, holding court amidst an assembly of the
nation’s chiefs. Each places his spear head down in the ground and delivers a
speech urging the new ruler to respect elders and tradition, protect the weak,
preserve the nation, and similar sage advice. Drums salute their words; the king
is invested in two silver bracelets that serve as marks of office; an ox is speared.
Finally, the king is given a tour of the capital. Everything is back in place. The
newly installed reth sends cattle for sacrifice to each of the shrines of Nyikang
scattered throughout the country. Some weeks later he is ready to preside over
his first major ritual, a series of sacrifices calling on Nyikang to call on God to
send the rain. Once the first rains fall, the effigies leave Fashoda and return to
their shrine in Akurwa, and do not return until the new king dies.
46. According to certain other versions, he now commits incest with a half-sister, a very
outrageous act. This is incidentally the closest the reth comes to committing one of
de Heusch’s “exploits,” and most sources do not even mention it.
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ON KINGS
Since the drama began with the people’s representatives announcing, “eu-
phemistically,” that they wish to kill the candidate-elect, it might be best to
end it by noting that even here, in the reth’s most benevolent function, there
were similar, darker possibilities. While one would imagine a newly inaugurated
reth would have nothing but enthusiasm for his role as rainmaker, this was not
always assumed to be the case.
The king is the only authorized person to refuse or permit sacrifices at the impor-
tant ritual ceremonies. The act of sacrificing animals to appease Juok, the highest
spirit, and Nyikang, the demi-god, cannot be correctly undertaken without the
king’s sanction. Without sacrifices the people’s wishes cannot be granted. It fol-
lows that the king is the real power in religious matters, and sometimes he with-
holds his beneficial powers if he feels the disloyalty of his subjects or their hatred
towards him. (Riad 1959: 205, citing Hofmayr 1925: 152 n. 1)
In other words, while the reth (unlike Simonse’s rainmaking kings) was not
personally responsible for bringing down rain through magical means, his role
was, at least potentially, not so very different. A drought might well be blamed
on royal spite—and, presumably, begin to spur a political crisis, even if it was
unlikely to end with an actual lynch mob.
THE INSTALLATION RITUAL: ANALYSIS
To some degree, the symbolic structure
of the ritual is quite transparent. There is
a constant juxtaposition of north and south, the former the division of Nyikang,
the latter, of the king. The north is identified with the eternal, universal “king-
ship”; the south, with the particular, mortal king. Hence as Evans-Pritchard
put it, in the ritual, “the kingship captures the king” (1948: 27). Having been
defeated as a human, the reth-elect becomes Nyikang, and is thus able to defeat
the effigy and banish it back to its shrine.
Another explicit element is the opposition of fire and water. At the same
time as the image of Nyikang emerges from the river far to the north, new
fires are lit in Debalo, the capital of the south, that will burn for the rest of
the king’s reign and be put out when he dies. Water here is eternity. It doesn’t
even “represent” eternity, it is eternity; the Nile will always be there, and always
the same. With the rains, it is the permanent source of fecundity and life. It is
THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK
117
therefore utterly appropriate that Nyikang, whose mother was a crocodile and
who is called “child of the river,” should emerge from its waters.47 Fire, on the
other hand, is, like blood, the stuff of worldly transformation. In this case, the
fires correspond to the mortal life of the individual king; they will exist exactly
as long as he lives. It is thus equally appropriate that when the synthesis of
Nyikang and reth, between the eternal principle and mortal office-holder, oc-
curs, it should be accompanying by putting a fire to water. The “bath” during
which the king becomes fully one with the demigod also unites the two elemen-
tal principles. Fire meets water as mortal man meets god.48
All these elements are, as I say, relatively straightforward. Other elements
are less so. The most puzzling is the role of Nyikang’s son Dak. Existing analy-
ses—even those that have a great deal to say about the effigies (Evans-Pritchard
1946; Arens 1984; Schnepel 1988)—focus almost exclusively on Nyikang, who
is always assumed to represent the timeless nature of the royal office. They rarely
have anything to say about Dak. But in many ways Dak seems even more im-
portant than Nyikang: if nothing else, because (just as in the legends he is the
first to transcend death through the means of an effigy) his is the only effigy
that was genuinely eternal. When the king dies, Nyikang returns to his mother
in the river. Dak remains. Dak’s effigy then presides over the re-creation of
Nyikang’s. What is one to make of this?
It might help here to return to the overall cosmological framework. The
reader will recall that the Shilluk Creator is rarely invoked directly, but largely
approached through Nyikang.
The al -powerful being who exists in the minds of the Shil uk as a remote and
amoral deity is cal ed Juok. Juok is the Shil uk conception of God and is present
to a greater and lesser degree in all things. Juok is the explanation of the unknown,
the reassuring justification of al the supernatural phenomena, good and bad, of
which life is made up. The principal medium through whom Juok is approached
is Nyikang. The distinction between them is not clear. Nyikang is Juok, but Juok is
not Nyikang. . . . Further the soul of Nyikang is reincarnate in every Shilluk reth,
47. All this is actually quite explicit: “As soon as the king dies, the spirit of Nyikang
goes to his mother Nyikaya in the river, and the people will have to go to the river
and bring him, and they will have to beg him to accept” (Singer in Schnepel 1988:
449).
48. One might also point out that this appears to be the ritual inversion of Nyikang’s
mythic battle with the Sun, where the hero used water to “burn” him.
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and thus exists both in the past and the present. Nyikang is the reth, but the reth
is not Nyikang. The paradox of the unity yet separation is not easy to define. The
Shil uk themselves would find it difficult to explain. Juok, Nyikang, and the reth
represent the line through whom divinity runs . . . . The reth is clearly himself the
medium through which both Nyikang and, more vaguely, Juok are approached,
and is the human intercessor with God. (P. P. Howel and Thomson 1946: 8)
After many years of contemplation and debate, scholars of Nilotic religions have
learned to read such paradoxical phrases (e.g., “God is the sky, but the sky is not
God”) as statements about refraction and encompassment: Nyikang is an aspect
of God, but God is in no way limited to that aspect.49 We are presented, as in a
rainmaking ceremony, with a very straightforward model of a linear hierarchy:
God
Nyikang
the reth
the people
The reth intercedes for the people and asks Nyikang to intercede with God
to bring the rains. If the rain comes, it temporarily joins everything together.
However, as we’ve seen, at every point there is potential antagonism. The people
may hate the reth or wish to kill him; they may curse Nyikang; the reth may
withhold the rains out of resentment of the people; the king and Nyikang raise
armies and do battle with each other. Only God seems to stand outside this, but
only because God is so distant: in Nuer and Dinka cosmologies, where Divinity
is a more immediate concern, we learn that the human condition was first cre-
ated because of God’s (apparently unjustified) anger against humans, and there
are even stories of defiant humans trying to make war on God and on the rain
49. Though in this case made even more confusing by reversing the order in the second
example. If this is not simply a mistake on the author’s part, it could be taken as a
telling sign of the reversibility of some of these hierarchies.
THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK
119
(Lienhardt 1961: 43–4). Antagonism here appears to be the very principle of
separation. Insofar as the reth is not Nyikang, it is first of all because the two
sometimes stand in a relation of mutual hostility.
This, too, is fairly straightforward. Certainly, there are ambiguities—for in-
stance, about how and whether the people themselves could be said to partake
of divinity, since divinity is, after all, said to be present in everything—but these
are the ambiguities typical of any such hierarchical system of encompassment.
Things get a little more complicated when one examines prayers offered
directly to God. Here is one in Westermann, pronounced during a sacrifice to
cure someone who is sick:
There is no one above thee, thou God. Though becamest the grandfather of
Nyikango; it is thou (Nyikango) who walkest with God; thou becamest the
grandfather (of man), and thy son Dak. If famine comes, is it not given by thee?
So as this cow stands here, is it not thus: if she dies, does her blood not go to
thee? Thou God, and thou who becamest Nyikango, and thy son Dak! But the
soul (of man), is it not thine own? (1912: 171; also in Lienhardt 1952: 156)50
Here we have the same sort of hierarchical participation (God became Nyikang
. . .) but the king is gone and Dak appears in his place:
God
Ny
ikang
Dak
human beings
Dak’s presence might not be entirely surprising here because it is most often
his attacks that make people to sick to begin with. If so Dak, however much
50. Actually, Westermann claims this is the only prayer offered directly to God, but
Hofmayr (1925: 197–201) and Oyler (1918b: 283) both produce other ones
(namely, C. G. Seligman 1934: 5).
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ON KINGS
subordinated, also represents the active principle that sets everything off. This
often seems to be his function.
Certainly, Dak is nothing if not active. This is especially obvious when he
is paired with Nyikang, which he normally is. Nyikang’s effigy is larger and
heavier; it is clearly meant to embody the gravitas and dignity of authority. His
image thus tends to stay near the center of things. In ordinary times, the effigy
remains in the temple at Akurwa even when Dak’s effigy leaves it to tour the
country; when the two do travel together, it is always Dak who moves about, in-
teracts, while Nyikang takes on a more “statesmanlike” reserve (Schnepel 1988:
437). True, one could argue this is simply a consequence of Dak’s subordinate
status: Nyikang is the authoritative center, Dak his worldly representative, his
errand-boy. But even here there are ambiguities. Most strikingly, while Dak is
smaller than Nyikang, he towers above him, always being carried atop an eight-
foot pole. Nyikang, in contrast, stays close to the ground; in fact his effigy is
often held parallel to the ground, while Dak’s is ordinarily vertical. Similar am-
biguities appear in stories about the two heroes’ lives. Sometimes, especially in
his youth, it is Dak who is always getting himself in trouble and Nyikang with
his magical power who must step in to save him. But later, during the conquest
of Shillukland, it is more likely to be the other way around: Nyikang is foiled
by some problem, and Dak proves more ingenious, or more resourceful with a
spear, and manages to solve it.
There is also the peculiar feature of Cal, Nyikang’s feckless older son, who
never accomplishes anything and whose image appears only when the effigies’
forces lose. Dak and Cal seem to represent opposites: pure aggression versus
absolute passivity, with Nyikang again defining the center. Yet in what way is
