Nilotes

NILOTES, certain peoples of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, of whom the Shilluk and Dinka, best known representatives of these tall "black"-skinned dolichocephals, have an average stature of about 1•78m. (about loin.) or perhaps a little more, and a cephalic index which varies around 72. In these tribes, as well as in the Nuer and Anuak, there is an Hamitic element, and although the majority have coarse features, with broad noses, among the Shilluk and probably the Anuak men with shapely features, including thin lips, long, relatively high-bridged, narrow noses, and well modelled foreheads are not uncommon.

The languages of the Nilotes form a sub-group of the family of languages called by Meinhof "Sudanic," characterized by the absence of inflection and grammatical gender and by the use of tone rather than accent, while typically each word consists of one syllable (see AFRICAN LANGUAGES). Shilluk so closely resembles Anuak that the two peoples can understand one another, and the same probably holds for Dinka and Nuer.

Mode of Life.

The Nilotes are essentially pastoral and largely riverain, their interest in their cattle being so far predom inant that they usually grow scarcely enough grain to supply them selves till the next harvest. For the most part the men go abso lutely naked, the women wear a pair of leather aprons reaching from waist to knee. The forehead is often scarred, and the lower incisors are generally removed. The skin is commonly smeared with the ash of wood and cattle dung. Ivory armlets are worn and the hair may be worked into elaborate head-dresses. Canni balism is unknown and human sacrifice is almost entirely absent. The number of cattle constituting the bride price is a matter of great importance, and this is usually paid in instalments. Certain iron-making groups of Dinka living near the Nile-Congo Divide, having few or no cattle, pay for their wives in iron. Widows are inherited by their husband's heirs, the children that they bear being counted as children of the first husband. Psychically the Nilotes, especially the Dinka, are distinguished from all other groups in their extreme aloofness and pride of race, showing abso lutely no desire for European clothes or trade objects.

The social organization of the Shilluk is into a number of exogamous groups, but whether these are totemistic must be left for future investigation. Among the Dinka, who consist of a congeries of independent tribes, there are typical totemistic clans with descent in the male line, the totem being an animal, plant or even a natural object such as a meteor or fire. Almost all

the clans whose totem is an animal derive their origin not from the animal itself but from a man born as one of twins, his fellow twin being an animal of the totem species, though sometimes the association is not quite so close, as when the totem animal lays certain commands upon members, offering in return certain privileges.

the Dinka and Shil luk, the only two Nilotic tribes of whose religious ideas there is definite knowledge, the king (Shilluk ret) or chief (Dinka baiii) is the rain-maker and belongs to the class of rulers called by Sir James Frazer Divine Kings, i.e., there is immanent in each a divine spirit upon which depends the fertility and well-being of the uni verse. Such divine kings are not allowed to go to battle and were formerly killed ceremonially with their own consent when they showed signs of ill-health, or sometimes even of diminishing strength, lest the decline in vigour of their body—the living shrine of the divine spirit—should entail the weakness of the latter, when the cattle would sicken and fail to bear their increase, the crops would rot in the fields, and men, stricken by disease, would die in ever increasing numbers. The Shilluk king is indeed the classical example of the divine king, and two stages of his treatment can be traced; the earlier, preserved alone in folklore, refers to a time when anyone could kill the king and become his successor until he in turn was killed by a stronger, while in more recent times the kill ing of the king has become a ceremonial affair, the leading part being assigned to certain families called the Ororo.

In the case of the Shilluk the divine spirit incarnate in each king is Nyakang, the historic founder of the Shilluk kingdom and their culture hero. Like so many divine or semi-divine characters he did not die but vanished in a great storm. He has ten cenotaph tombs, the most sacred perhaps being that of Fenikang, the vil lage in which he lived for a great part of his life. It is the presence of the divine spirit of Nyakang in the ruling king which enables the latter to move the High God, Juok, to send rain.

See W. Hofmeyer, Die Shilluk (1925) ; C. G. Seligman, "The Cult of Nyanking," Fourth Report of the Wellcome Laboratory, 1911, Vol. B.

(C. G. S.)