by Faun Rice
Nyikang superior if he is more like the useless Cal?
What I would suggest is that this is not just a dilemma of interpretation for
the outside analyst; it reflects a fundamental dilemma about the nature of politi-
cal power that Shilluk tend to find as intractable as anyone else. Rituals can be
interpreted as ways of puzzling out such problems, even as, simultaneously, they
are ways of making concrete political change in the world.
Critical here is the role of the interregnum, the “year of fear.” Wherever
there are kings, interregna tend to be seen as periods of chaos and violence,
times when the very cosmological order is thrown into disarray. But as Burkhard
Schnepel (1988: 450) justly points out, this is the reason most monarchies try
to keep them as brief as possible. There is no particular reason why those organ-
izing the Shilluk installation ceremonies could not have declared, say, a three- to
THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK
121
five-day period of chaos and terror—in fact, by the 1970s, that’s exactly what
they decided to do, abandoning the year-long interregnum entirely (ibid.: 443).
If for centuries before they didn’t, it indicates, if nothing else, that this year of
fear was fundamentally important in some way.
Its importance, I think, is the key to understanding the importance of Dak
as well. During the interregnum, royal politics, ordinarily bottled up in the fig-
ure of the reth, overflows into society at large. The result is constant peril. Dur-
ing this period, Nyikang is gone, and Dak alone remains. The return to normalcy
begins with the stage of “preparations,” conducted under Dak’s general aegis,
and often under his direct supervision. Expeditions set out to appropriate the
materials with which to reconstruct the royal office, starting with the effigies.
They uproot plants, they hunt and kill animals, they ambush and plunder camps
and caravans. Nor do they limit their depredations to foreigners. They “take
what they like” from Shilluk communities as well.
Dak’s expeditions, then, represent indiscriminate predatory violence di-
rected at every aspect of creation: vegetable, animal, every sort of human being.
As I have pointed out, “indiscriminate” in this context also means “universal.”
Ordinarily, when one is in the presence of a power that can rain destruction
equally on anyone and everyone, that is what Shilluk refer to as Juok, or God.51
This is not to say that Dak is God (or, to be more precise, it is to say: God
is Dak, but Dak is not God). Dak is the human capacity to act like God, to
mimic his capricious, predatory destructiveness. In the stories, this is how he
first appears: raining death and disaster arbitrarily. From his own perspective,
“taking what he likes.” From the perspective of his victims, playing God. Dur-
ing the interregnum, then, it is not just royal politics that spil s over into society
at large; it is divine power itself—the violent, arbitrary divine power that is,
51. God seems particularly immanent in violence or destruction. The above-cited
prayer says “spear-thrusts are of Juok,” and one of the few ways that God is regularly
invoked in common speech is, as noted above, when people call out “Why, God?”
when someone falls seriously ill. Among related Nilotic speakers in Uganda,
“anything to do with killing must have juok in it” (Mogenson 2002: 424). On the
other hand, in formal speech, God, so absent from the everyday life of ordinary
Shilluk, pervades every aspect of royal existence. When speaking with members
of the royal clan, one can never speak of their going someplace, or getting up, or
staying someplace, or entering a house; instead they are “taken by God” to that
place, “lifted by God,” “nursed by God,” “stuffed in the house by God,” and so on
(Pumphrey 1936).
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ON KINGS
as Shil uk institutions ensured no one could ever forget, the real essence and
origin of royalty.
Of course, God (Juok) is not simply a force of destruction; he is also, origi-
nally, the creator of everything—and it is probably worth noting that this is
also the only point in the ceremonies where anyone really makes or fashions
anything. Still, this is not what’s emphasized. What is emphasized is appropria-
tion, which is perhaps the most distinctly human form of activity. Through a
combination of appropriation and creation, Dak’s people thus fashion Nyikang.
Once they have done so, and Nyikang returns, he (unlike Dak) limits his depre-
dations to his own Shilluk nation, retracing his original journey of conquest. But
there seems to be a calculated ambiguity here. Do the Shilluk become Shilluk—
Nyikang’s subjects—because they collectively construct Nyikang (the classic
fetish king, created by his people) or because he then goes on to conquer them
(the classic divine king, raining disaster or the threat of disaster equally on all)?
The interregnum, then, is a time when divine power suffuses everything.
This is what makes the creation of society possible. It’s also what makes the
creation of society necessary, since it results in an undifferentiated state of chaos
and at least potential violence of all against all. Social order—like cosmic or-
der—comes of separation, and the resultant creation of a relatively balanced,
stable set of antagonisms. That one is, in fact, dealing with divine power here
is confirmed by stories about the nature of the election itself. The electoral col-
lege is made up primarily of commoners, with a few royal representatives, but
many insisted that “in former times” a delegation from the Nuba kingdom, the
ancient allies of Nyikang, performed a ritual, a “fire ordeal,” involving throw-
ing either sticks or pebbles in a fire, that ensured that the new reth was chosen
directly by God (Westermann 1912: 122; Hofmayr 1925: 451). Even in cur-
rent times, the election is taken to represent God’s choice: this is what al ows
the reth to tel the chief of Debalo that he is the man “sent by God to rule the
land of the Shilluk” (Lienhardt 1952: 157).52 The people and God are here
interchangeable.
With Nyikang’s return, God leaves the picture, and Dak is again reduced
to his father’s deputy. Divinity begins to be properly bottled up. Nyikang may
52. The presence of foreigners here—even if legendary—seems to be a reminder of
the universality of the divine principle. Note, too, the opposition between this “fire
ordeal,” in which the candidate is chosen by God, and the “water ordeal,” in which
he is confirmed by Nyikang.
THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK
123
continue Dak’s predatory ways, looting and pillaging as he reenacts his con-
quests, but it has all become something of a burlesque.
Over the course of the ceremonies, Nyikang’s spirit, having been coaxed out
of the river, is transferred first into the effigy, then, just as reluctantly, into the
body of the reth-elect. In doing so, Nyikang is also moving forward in history:
from his birth from the river in mythic times, to his heroic exploits in the begin-
ning of Shilluk history, to his current inca
rnation in the body of a contemporary
king. If one looks at what is happening in the south, surrounding the candi-
date, however, we see a very different kind of drama. I have already mentioned
the contrast between the water symbolism surrounding Nyikang and the fire
symbolism surrounding the king. This is also a juxtaposition between mortality
and eternity. Nyikang might be constructed, but he is constructed of eternal
materials. (There will always be a river, just as there will always be ostriches and
bamboo.) He then moves from the generic—and thus timeless—to the increas-
ingly particular, and hence historic. But he will never actually die, just disappear
and begin the cycle all over again. The king, on the other hand, is from the start
surrounded by reminders of his own mortality.
If the fires are the most obvious of these reminders, the most important
are surely the Ororo. The Ororo preside over every aspect of the king’s mortal-
ity. As degraded nobility, their very existence is a reminder that royal status
is not eternal: that kings have children, that most of them will not be kings,
that eventually, royal status itself can pass away. In royal ritual, Ororo have a
jurisdiction over everything that pertains to sexuality and death. They are the
men who carry out the sacrifices for the king by spearing and roasting animals,
they are the women who wash, shave, and seduce the king; they will provide his
highest-ranking wives; they protect but eventually kill him; they officiate over
the decomposition and burial of his corpse. Throughout the ceremonies, the
reth-elect is surrounded by Ororo. When he is defeated and seized by Nyikang,
he is plucked from amidst his own mortality.
This is not to say that the reth is ever more than “temporarily” immortal.
Even after his capture, the Ororo soon return.
This theme plays itself out throughout the ceremony. If the drama in the
north is about the gradual containment of arbitrary, divine power, the drama
in the south is about human vulnerability. The reth-to-be is mocked, treated as
a child, forced to ride backward on an ox. His followers never wield arbitrary
power over humans. Unlike Dak and Nyikang, they do not loot or plunder or
hold passers-by for ransom. They do, however, constantly offer animals up for
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ON KINGS
sacrifice. Just about every significant action of the king is marked by his step-
ping over (thus, consecrating) some animal, which is later ritually killed.53 In
one sense what the king does is the exact opposite of what Nyikang and Dak
are doing. Sacrificial meat is redistributed,54 so instead of stealing live beasts, he
is distributing the flesh of dead ones. This is especially significant since, when
presiding over sacrifices meant to resolve feuds, Shilluk kings have been known
to state quite explicitly that the flesh and blood of the animal they sacrifice
should be considered as their own (Oyler 1920a: 298). Since in ordinary Shilluk
sacrifices the life and blood of the creature (unlike the flesh) are said to “go up
to God”—and to Nyikang—it would seem the king is here playing the part of
humanity as a whole, placing himself in a willfully subordinate position to the
cosmic powers that will ultimately take hold of him.
In a larger sense, sacrifice—in all Nilotic religions the paradigmatic ritu-
al—is about the reestablishment of boundaries.55 Divinity has entered into the
world, the ordinary divisions of the cosmos (e.g., between humans, animals,
and gods) have become confused; the result is illness or catastrophe. So while
sacrifice is, here as everywhere, a way of entering into communication with the
Divine, it is ultimately a way of putting Divinity back in its proper place. If the
interregnum, the reign of Dak, is a time of indiscriminate violence against every
aspect of creation, sacrifice is about restoring discriminations: respect ( thek), to
use the Nuer/Dinka phrase;56 separation, appropriate distance. In this sense, the
entire installation ceremony is a kind of sacrifice, or at least does the same thing
that a sacrifice is ordinarily meant to do. It restores a world of separations.
Of course, if the ritual is a kind of sacrifice, it is reasonable to ask: Who is
the victim? The reth-elect? A case could be made. The ceremony begins with the
53. It happens so often that most such examples I actually purged from my account,
above, to avoid monotony.
54. This is not to say that Nyikang’s passage does not include some acts of sacrifice, since
otherwise there could be no feasts; only that this is not a particularly important
aspect of what he does. With the king it is clearly otherwise.
55. In the absence of any detailed published material on Shilluk sacrifice, I am drawing
here on Evans-Pritchard (1954, 1956) on the Nuer, but even more Lienhardt’s
work on the Dinka (1961) and Beidelman’s (1966a, 1981) reinterpretations of this
material.
56. On thek, see Beidelman (1981). The Shilluk cognate appears to be pak, usually translated “praise,” which also refers to specialized formal language used within and
between clans (see Crazzolara 1951: 140–42). As usual, though, there isn’t enough
material on Shilluk custom to make a sustained comparison.
THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK
125
people informing the candidate that they wish to kil him. During his time in
Debalo, he is treated very much like an ox being prepared for sacrifice: sacrificial
oxen, too, are secluded, manhandled, and mocked—even while those who mock
them also confess their sins (Lienhardt 1961: 292–95).57 Then in the end the
ox’s death becomes a token of a newly created community, its unity brought into
concrete being in the sharing of the animal’s flesh. Here one could almost see
the humiliated princely candidate in a messianic role, giving of himself to man
and god, sacrificing himself in the name of Shil uk unity. But if so, the obvious
objection is that he doesn’t seem to be sacrificing very much. To the contrary: the
ceremonies end with the new king happily installed in Fashoda, accepting the al-
legiance of his subjects, inspecting the buildings, reassembling a harem; perhaps,
if so inclined, plotting bloody revenge on anyone who has ever insulted him.
Still, all this is temporary. The king is, ultimately, destined to die a ritual
death.
So, is the king to be considered a sacrificial victim on temporary reprieve? In
a certain sense, I would say yes. Every act of sacrifice does, after all, contain its
utopian moment. Here, it’s as if the king is suspended inside that utopian mo-
ment indefinitely—or at least, so long as his strength holds out.
Let me explain what I mean by this. Normally, what I’m calling the utopian
moment in sacrifice is experienced first and foremost in the feast, after the ani-
mal is dead, when the entire community is brought together for the collective
enjoyment of its flesh. Often this is a community that has been created, patched
together from previously unrelated or even hostile factions, by the ceremony
itself. Even if that is not the case, they must put aside any prior differences. Ac-
cording to Lienhardt, for Dinka, such mome
nts of communal harmony are the
closest one can come to the direct experience of God—or, to be more exact, to
Divinity in its aspect of benevolent universality:
In Divinity the Dinka image their experience of the ways in which human be-
ings everywhere resemble each other, and in a sense form a single community
with one original ancestor created by one Creator. . . . When, therefore, a prophet
like Arianhdit shows that he is able to make peace between normally exclusive
57. Admittedly, I am relying here on Lienhardt’s detailed description and analysis of
Dinka sacrifice, supplemented by Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer ethnography, but this
is, as I say, because no parallel Shilluk account exists. For what it’s worth, Evans-
Pritchard (1954: 28) felt it appropriate to use Shilluk statements to throw light on
Nuer practices.
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ON KINGS
and hostile communities, to persuade them to observe between them the peace-
ful conventions which they had previously observed only internally, and to unite
people of different origins in a single community, he proves that he is a “man of
Divinity.” . . . A man is recognized as a powerful “man of Divinity” because he
creates for people the experience of peace between men and of the uniting of
forces which are normally opposed to each other, of which Divinity is under-
stood to be the grounds. (1961: 157)
It’s in this sense that God “also represents truth, justice, honesty, uprightness,”
and so on (ibid.: 158). It is not because God, as a conscious entity, is just. In fact,
like most Nilotic peoples, Dinka seem haunted by the strong suspicion that he
isn’t. It is because truth, justice, and so on, are the necessary grounds for “order
and peace in human relations,” and therefore, truth, justice, and so on, are God.
The point of sacrificial ritual, then, is to move from one manifestation of the di-
vine to the other: from God as confusion and disaster to God as unity and peace.
Normally it is the feast which seems to act as the primary experience of God,
but often the divine element takes even more concrete form in the undigested
grass extracted from the cow’s stomach. It seems significant that the one Shilluk
sacrifice for which we have any sort of description—other than those meant to
bring the rain—is aimed at creating peace between two parties to a feud (Oyler
