Nyikang
Half-divine founder of the Shilluk Kingdom (c. 1490 CE); son of the mortal king Okwa by the crocodile-river-goddess Nyakaya. Twin (or near-twin) of Duwat; defeated by him in succession crisis; migrated north along the Nile to found the Shilluk Kingdom at the Sobat-Nile confluence. The half-crocodile form inherited from his maternal line; the rain-mastery and Sun-defeat the divine-attributes that mark his demigod-status. Disappeared in a whirlwind rather than dying; his spirit continues to inhabit a wooden effigy and is invoked into each new Reth at coronation. Every Shilluk Reth from Dak (his son and immediate successor) through Reth Kwongo Dak Padiet (1993-present) is institutionally Nyikang for the duration of his reign — the longest continuous demigod-spirit-kingship in any human institutional tradition. Subject of James George Frazer's Golden Bough and David Graeber's 2011 HAU paper as the classical anthropological case-study of divine kingship.
Parentage
Children
Domains
- founder of the shilluk kingdom
- rain mastery and royal possession
Powers
- Control the rain
- Possess each reigning king
- Resurrect the slain
- Drive the sun back to the sky
Epithets
- the first reth
Relations
- sibling: Duwat
- sibling: Gilo
- lover: Akec
- father of: Dak
- father of: Bwor
- father of: Cal
- father of: Anongo
- sibling: Milo
Sources
- Wilhelm Hofmayr Die Schilluk (1925, the seminal monograph); D. S. Oyler 1918; Diedrich 1912; Charles Seligman 1911 ethnographic study; James George Frazer The Golden Bough (1916, made the Shilluk installation-ritual famous); David Graeber "The divine kingship of the Shilluk" HAU Journal 2011
- Hofmayr; Diedrich 1912