Abuk

First woman and the chief female divinity, patroness of women and gardens, figured as a snake.

Children

• Deng

Domains

• women fertility
• gardens crops

Powers

• Watch over women, gardens, and grain
• Be the first woman, separated from Divinity
• watches over women, gardens and grain as the first woman and chief female divinity

Epithets

• the first woman latin · Abuk · cultThe first woman; patroness of women, gardens, and grain, and mother of DengGodfrey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: GarangThe first woman and first man, paired in Dinka tradition as the primordial couple; their named free-divinities remain patrons of women and men respectively.G. Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (1961) (secondary)
• syncretism: BukDocumented borrowing: Nuer Buk, river-linked spirit of the above and mother of Deng, is the Dinka Abuk (first woman) adopted into Nuer religion per Evans-Pritchard. Mother-of-Deng link kept; first-woman myth drops.E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (1956), ch. 2, on Buk as a spirit of Dinka provenance (secondary); Godfrey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience (1961), on Abuk (secondary)

Sources

• existence: Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience (1961) (secondary)