Section 2. Kings killed when their Strength
fails.
IF THE HIGH gods, who dwell remote from the fret and fever of this
earthly life, are yet believed to die at last, it is not to be expected
that a god who lodges in a frail tabernacle of flesh should escape
the same fate, though we hear of African kings who have imagined
themselves immortal by virtue of their sorceries. Now primitive
peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that their safety and
even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these
god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. Naturally, therefore,
they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own.
But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god
from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His worshippers
have to lay their account with this sad necessity and to meet it as
best they can. The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of
nature is dependent on the man-god's life, what catastrophes may
not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and
their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting
these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows
symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must
be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously
impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of thus putting
the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old age and
disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the man-god
dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to the
savage, that his soul has either voluntarily departed from his body
and refuses to return, or more commonly that it has been extracted,
or at least detained in its wanderings, by a demon or sorcerer. In
any of these cases the soul of the man-god is lost to his
worshippers, and with it their prosperity is gone and their very
existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul
of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer it to
a successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, dying of
disease, his soul would necessarily leave his body in the last stage
of weakness and exhaustion, and so enfeebled it would continue to
drag out a languid, inert existence in any body to which it might be
transferred. Whereas by slaying him his worshippers could, in the
first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and
transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second place, by
putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they
would secure that the world should not fall into decay with the
decay of the man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was answered,
and all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and
transferring his soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous
successor. 1
The mystic kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia are not allowed
to die a natural death. Hence when one of them is seriously ill and
the elders think that he cannot recover, they stab him to death. The
people of Congo believed, as we have seen, that if their pontiff the
Chitomé were to die a natural death, the world would perish, and
the earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell ill and
seemed likely to die, the man who was destined to be his
successor entered the pontiff's house with a rope or a club and
strangled or clubbed him to death. The Ethiopian kings of Meroe
were worshipped as gods; but whenever the priests chose, they
sent a messenger to the king, ordering him to die, and alleging an
oracle of the gods as their authority for the command. This
command the kings always obeyed down to the reign of
Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II., King of Egypt. Having
received a Greek education which emancipated him from the
superstitions of his countrymen, Ergamenes ventured to disregard
the command of the priests, and, entering the Golden Temple with a
body of soldiers, put the priests to the sword. 2
Customs of the same sort appear to have prevailed in this part of
Africa down to modern times. In some tribes of Fazoql the king had
to administer justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness or
any other cause he was unable to discharge this duty for three
whole days, he was hanged on the tree in a noose, which
contained two razors so arranged that when the noose was drawn
tight by the weight of the king's body they cut his throat. 3
A custom of putting their divine kings to death at the first
symptoms of infirmity or old age prevailed until lately, if indeed it is
even now extinct and not merely dormant, among the Shilluk of the
White Nile, and in recent years it has been carefully investigated
by Dr. C. G. Seligman. The reverence which the Shilluk pay to their
king appears to arise chiefly from the conviction that he is a
reincarnation of the spirit of Nyakang, the semi-divine hero who
founded the dynasty and settled the tribe in their present territory. It
is a fundamental article of the Shilluk creed that the spirit of the
divine or semi-divine Nyakang is incarnate in the reigning king,
who is accordingly himself invested to some extent with the
character of a divinity. But while the Shilluk hold their kings in high,
indeed religious reverence and take every precaution against their
accidental death, nevertheless they cherish "the conviction that the
king must not be allowed to become ill or senile, lest with his
diminishing vigour the cattle should sicken and fail to bear their
increase, the crops should rot in the fields, and man, stricken with
disease, should die in ever-increasing numbers." To prevent these
calamities it used to be the regular custom with the Shilluk to put
the king to death whenever he showed signs of ill-health or failing
strength. One of the fatal symptoms of decay was taken to be an
incapacity to satisfy the sexual passions of his wives, of whom he
has very many, distributed in a large number of houses at Fashoda.
When this ominous weakness manifested itself, the wives reported it
to the chiefs, who are popularly said to have intimated to the king
his doom by spreading a white cloth over his face and knees as he
lay slumbering in the heat of the sultry afternoon. Execution soon
followed the sentence of death. A hut was specially built for the
occasion: the king was led into it and lay down with his head
resting on the lap of a nubile virgin: the door of the hut was then
walled up; and the couple were left without food, water, or fire to
die of hunger and suffocation. This was the old custom, but it was
abolished some five generations ago on account of the excessive
sufferings of one of the kings who perished in this way. It is said
that the chiefs announce his fate to the king, and that afterwards he
is strangled in a hut which has been specially built for the
occasion. 4
From Dr. Seligman's enquiries it appears that not only was the
Shilluk king liable to be killed with due ceremony at the first
symptoms of incipient decay, but even while he was yet in the
prime of health and strength he might be attacked at any time by a
rival and have to defend his crown in a combat to the death.
According to the common Shilluk tradition any son of a king had
the right thus to fight the king in possession and, if he succeeded in
killing him, to reign in his stead. As every king had a large harem
and many sons, the number of possible candidates for the throne at
any time may well have been not inconsiderable, and the reigning
monarch must have carried his life in his hand. But the attack on
him could only take place with any prospect of success at night; for
during the day the king surrounded himself with his friends and
bodyguards, and an aspirant to the throne could hardly hope to cut
his way through them and strike home. It was otherwise at night. For
then the guards were dismissed and the king was alone in his
enclosure with his favourite wives, and there was no man near to
defend him except a few herdsmen, whose huts stood a little way
off. The hours of darkness were therefore the season of peril for the
king. It is said that he used to pass them in constant watchfulness,
prowling round his huts fully armed, peering into the blackest
shadows, or himself standing silent and alert, like a sentinel on
duty, in some dark corner. When at last his rival appeared, the fight
would take place in grim silence, broken only by the clash of
spears and shields, for it was a point of honour with the king not to
call the herdsmen to his assistance. 5
Like Nyakang himself, their founder, each of the Shilluk kings after
death is worshipped at a shrine, which is erected over his grave,
and the grave of a king is always in the village where he was born.
The tomb-shrine of a king resembles the shrine of Nyakang,
consisting of a few huts enclosed by a fence; one of the huts is
built over the king's grave, the others are occupied by the
guardians of the shrine. Indeed the shrines of Nyakang and the
shrines of the kings are scarcely to be distinguished from each
other, and the religious rituals observed at all of them are identical
in form and vary only in matters of detail, the variations being due
apparently to the far greater sanctity attributed to the shrines of
Nyakang. The grave-shrines of the kings are tended by certain old
men or women, who correspond to the guardians of the shrines of
Nyakang. They are usually widows or old men-servants of the
deceased king, and when they die they are succeeded in their
office by their descendants. Moreover, cattle are dedicated to the
grave-shrines of the kings and sacrifices are offered at them just as
at the shrines of Nyakang. 6
In general the principal element in the religion of the Shilluk would
seem to be the worship which they pay to their sacred or divine
kings, whether dead or alive. These are believed to be animated by
a single divine spirit, which has been transmitted from the
semi-mythical, but probably in substance historical, founder of the
dynasty through all his successors to the present day. Hence,
regarding their kings as incarnate divinities on whom the welfare of
men, of cattle, and of the corn implicitly depends, the Shilluk
naturally pay them the greatest respect and take every care of
them; and however strange it may seem to us, their custom of
putting the divine king to death as soon as he shows signs of
ill-health or failing strength springs directly from their profound
veneration for him and from their anxiety to preserve him, or rather
the divine spirit by which he is animated, in the most perfect state
of efficiency: nay, we may go further and say that their practice of
regicide is the best proof they can give of the high regard in which
they hold their kings. For they believe, as we have seen, that the
king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the
prosperity of the whole country, that if he fell ill or grew senile the
cattle would sicken and cease to multiply, the crops would rot in
the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease. Hence, in
their opinion, the only way of averting these calamities is to put the
king to death while he is still hale and hearty, in order that the
divine spirit which he has inherited from his predecessors may be
transmitted in turn by him to his successor while it is still in full
vigour and has not yet been impaired by the weakness of disease
and old age. In this connexion the particular symptom which is
commonly said to seal the king's death-warrant is highly
significant; when he can no longer satisfy the passions of his
numerous wives, in other words, when he has ceased, whether
partially or wholly, to be able to reproduce his kind, it is time for
him to die and to make room for a more vigorous successor. Taken
along with the other reasons which are alleged for putting the king
to death, this one suggests that the fertility of men, of cattle, and of
the crops is believed to depend sympathetically on the generative
power of the king, so that the complete failure of that power in him
would involve a corresponding failure in men, animals, and plants,
and would thereby entail at no distant date the entire extinction of
all life, whether human, animal, or vegetable. No wonder, that with
such a danger before their eyes the Shilluk should be most careful
not to let the king die what we should call a natural death of
sickness or old age. It is characteristic of their attitude towards the
death of the kings that they refrain from speaking of it as death: they
do not say that a king has died but simply that he has "gone away"
like his divine ancestors Nyakang and Dag, the two first kings of
the dynasty, both of whom are reported not to have died but to
have disappeared. The similar legends of the mysterious
disappearance of early kings in other lands, for example at Rome
and in Uganda, may well point to a similar custom of putting them to
death for the purpose of preserving their life. 7
On the whole the theory and practice of the divine kings of the
Shilluk correspond very nearly to the theory and practice of the
priests of Nemi, the Kings of the Wood, if my view of the latter is
correct. In both we see a series of divine kings on whose life the
fertility of men, of cattle, and of vegetation is believed to depend,
and who are put to death, whether in single combat or otherwise, in
order that their divine spirit may be transmitted to their successors
in full vigour, uncontaminated by the weakness and decay of
sickness or old age, because any such degeneration on the part of
the king would, in the opinion of his worshippers, entail a
corresponding degeneration on manking, on cattle, and on the
crops. Some points in this explanation of the custom of putting
divine kings to death, particularly the method of transmitting their
divine souls to their successors, will be dealt with more fully in the
sequel. Meantime we pass to other examples of the general
practice. 8
The Dinka are a congeries of independent tribes in the valley of
the White Nile. They are essentially a pastoral people, passionately
devoted to the care of their numerous herds of oxen, though they
also keep sheep and goats, and the women cultivate small
quantities of millet and sesame. For their crops and above all for
their pastures they depend on the regularity of the rains: in seasons
of prolonged drought they are said to be reduced to great
extremities. Hence the rain-maker is a very important personage
among them to this day; indeed the men in authority whom
travellers dub chiefs or sheikhs are in fact the actual or potential
rain-makers of the tribe or community. Each of them is believed to
be animated by the spirit of a great rain-maker, which has come
down to him through a succession of rain-makers; and in virtue of
this inspiration a successful rain-maker enjoys very great power
and is consulted on all important matters. Yet in spite, or rather in
virtue, of the high honour in which he is held, no Dinka rain-maker
is allowed to die a natural death of sickness or old age; for the
Dinka believe that if such an untoward event were to happen, the
tribe would suffer from disease and famine, and the herds would not
yield their increase. So when a rain-maker feels that he is growing
old and infirm, he tells his children that he wishes to die. Among the
Agar Dinka a large grave is dug and the rain-maker lies down in it,
surrounded by his friends and relatives. From time to time he
speaks to the people, recalling the past history of the tribe,
reminding them how he has ruled and advised them, and instructing
them how they are to act in the future. Then, when he has
concluded his admonition, he bids them cover him up. So the earth
is thrown down on him as he lies in the grave, and he soon dies of
suffocation. Such, with minor variations, appears to be the regular
end of the honourable career of a rain-maker in all the Dinka
tribes. The Khor-Adar Dinka told Dr. Seligman that when they have
dug the grave for their rain-maker they strangle him in his house.
The father and paternal uncle of one of Dr. Seligman's informants
had both been rain-makers and both had been killed in the most
regular and orthodox fashion. Even if a rain-maker is quite young
he will be put to death should he seem likely to perish of disease.
Further, every precaution is taken to prevent a rain-maker from
dying an accidental death, for such an end, though not nearly so
serious a matter as death from illness or old age, would be sure to
entail sickness on the tribe. As soon as a rain-maker is killed, his
valuable spirit is supposed to pass to a suitable successor, whether
a son or other near blood relation. 9
In the Central African kingdom of Bunyoro down to recent years
custom required that as soon as the king fell seriously ill or began
to break up from age, he should die by his own hand; for,
according to an old prophecy, the throne would pass away from
the dynasty if ever the king were to die a natural death. He killed
himself by draining a poisoned cup. If he faltered or were too ill to
ask for the cup, it was his wife's duty to administer the poison.
When the king of Kibanga, on the Upper Congo, seems near his
end, the sorcerers put a rope round his neck, which they draw
gradually tighter till he dies. If the king of Gingiro happens to be
wounded in war, he is put to death by his comrades, or, if they fail
to kill him, by his kinsfolk, however hard he may beg for mercy.
They say they do it that he may not die by the hands of his
enemies. The Jukos are a heathen tribe of the Benue River, a great
tributary of the Niger. In their country "the town of Gatri is ruled by
a king who is elected by the big men of the town as follows. When
in the opinion of the big men the king has reigned long enough,
they give out that `the king is sick'-a formula understood by all to
mean that they are going to kill him, though the intention is never
put more plainly. They then decide who is to be the next king. How
long he is to reign is settled by the influential men at a meeting; the
question is put and answered by each man throwing on the ground
a little piece of stick for each year he thinks the new king should
rule. The king is then told, and a great feast prepared, at which the
king gets drunk on guinea-corn beer. After that he is speared, and
the man who was chosen becomes king. Thus each Juko king
knows that he cannot have very many more years to live, and that
he is certain of his predecessor's fate. This, however, does not
seem to frighten candidates. The same custom of king-killing is said
to prevail at Quonde and Wukari as well as at Gatri." In the three
Hausa kingdoms of Gobir, Katsina, and Daura, in Northern Nigeria,
as soon as a king showed signs of failing health or growing
infirmity, an official who bore the title of Killer of the Elephant
appeared and throttled him. 10
The Matiamvo is a great king or emperor in the interior of Angola.
One of the inferior kings of the country, by name Challa, gave to a
Portuguese expedition the following account of the manner in which
the Matiamvo comes by his end. "It has been customary," he said,
"for our Matiamvos to die either in war or by a violent death, and
the present Matiamvo must meet this last fate, as, in consequence
of his great exactions, he has lived long enough. When we come to
this understanding, and decide that he should be killed, we invite
him to make war with our enemies, on which occasion we all
accompany him and his family to the war, when we lose some of
our people. If he escapes unhurt, we return to the war again and
fight for three or four days. We then suddenly abandon him and his
family to their fate, leaving him in the enemy's hands. Seeing
himself thus deserted, he causes his throne to be erected, and,
sitting down, calls his family around him. He then orders his mother
to approach; she kneels at his feet; he first cuts off her head, then
decapitates his sons in succession, next his wives and relatives,
and, last of all, his most beloved wife, called Anacullo. This
slaughter being accomplished, the Matiamvo, dressed in all his
pomp, awaits his own death, which immediately follows, by an
officer sent by the powerful neighbouring chiefs, Caniquinha and
Canica. This officer first cuts off his legs and arms at the joints, and
lastly he cuts off his head; after which the head of the officer is
struck off. All the potentates retire from the encampment, in order
not to witness his death. It is my duty to remain and witness his
death, and to mark the place where the head and arms have been
deposited by the two great chiefs, the enemies of the Matiamvo.
They also take possession of all the property belonging to the
deceased monarch and his family, which they convey to their own
residence. I then provide for the funeral of the mutilated remains of
the late Matiamvo, after which I retire to his capital and proclaim
the new government. I then return to where the head, legs, and
arms have been deposited, and, for forty slaves, I ransom them,
together with the merchandise and other property belonging to the
deceased, which I give up to the new Matiamvo, who has been
proclaimed. This is what has happened to many Matiamvos, and
what must happen to the present one." 11
It appears to have been a Zulu custom to put the king to death as
soon as he began to have wrinkles or grey hairs. At least this
seems implied in the following passage written by one who resided
for some time at the court of the notorious Zulu tyrant Chaka, in the
early part of the nineteenth century: "The extraordinary violence of
the king's rage with me was mainly occasioned by that absurd
nostrum, the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr. Farewell had
impressed him as being a specific for removing all indications of
age. From the first moment of his having heard that such a
preparation was attainable, he evinced a solicitude to procure it,
and on every occasion never forgot to remind us of his anxiety
respecting it; more especially on our departure on the mission his
injunctions were particularly directed to this object. It will be seen
that it is one of the barbarous customs of the Zoolas in their choice
or election of their kings that he must neither have wrinkles nor
grey hairs, as they are both distinguishing marks of disqualification
for becoming a monarch of a warlike people. It is also equally
indispensable that their king should never exhibit those proofs of
having become unfit and incompetent to reign; it is therefore
important that they should conceal these indications so long as
they possibly can. Chaka had become greatly apprehensive of the
approach of grey hairs; which would at once be the signal for him
to prepare to make his exit from this sublunary world, it being
always followed by the death of the monarch." The writer to whom
we are indebted for this instructive anecdote of the hair oil omits to
specify the mode in which a grey-haired and wrinkled Zulu chief
used "to make his exit from this sublunary world"; but on analogy
we may conjecture that he was killed. 12
The custom of putting kings to death as soon as they suffered from
any personal defect prevailed two centuries ago in the Caffre
kingdom of Sofala. We have seen that these kings of Sofala were
regarded as gods by their people, being entreated to give rain or
sunshine, according as each might be wanted. Nevertheless a
slight bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was considered a
sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we
learn from the following passage of an old Portuguese historian: "It
was formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit suicide
by taking poison when any disaster or natural physical defect fell
upon them, such as impotence, infectious disease, the loss of their
front teeth, by which they were disfigured, or any other deformity or
affliction. To put an end to such defects they killed themselves,
saying that the king should be free from any blemish, and if not, it
was better for his honour that he should die and seek another life
where he would be made whole, for there everything was perfect.
But the Quiteve (king) who reigned when I was in those parts would
not imitate his predecessors in this, being discreet and dreaded as
he was; for having lost a front tooth he caused it to be proclaimed
throughout the kingdom that all should be aware that he had lost a
tooth and should recognise him when they saw him without it, and
if his predecessors killed themselves for such things they were very
foolish, and he would not do so; on the contrary, he would be very
sorry when the time came for him to die a natural death, for his life
was very necessary to preserve his kingdom and defend it from his
enemies; and he recommended his successors to follow his
example." 13
The king of Sofala who dared to survive the loss of his front tooth
was thus a bold reformer like Ergamenes, king of Ethiopia. We may
conjecture that the ground for putting the Ethiopian kings to death
was, as in the case of the Zulu and Sofala kings, the appearance
on their person of any bodily defect or sign of decay; and that the
oracle which the priests alleged as the authority for the royal
execution was to the effect that great calamities would result from
the reign of a king who had any blemish on his body; just as an
oracle warned Sparta against a "lame reign," that is, the reign of a
lame king. It is some confirmation of this conjecture that the kings of
Ethiopia were chosen for their size, strength, and beauty long
before the custom of killing them was abolished. To this day the
Sultan of Wadai must have no obvious bodily defect, and the king
of Angoy cannot be crowned if he has a single blemish, such as a
broken or a filed tooth or the scar of an old wound. According to
the Book of Acaill and many other authorities no king who was
afflicted with a personal blemish might reign over Ireland at Tara.
Hence, when the great King Cormac Mac Art lost one eye by an
accident, he at once abdicated. 14
Many days' journey to the north-east of Abomey, the old capital
of Dahomey, lies the kingdom of Eyeo. "The Eyeos are governed
by a king, no less absolute than the king of Dahomey, yet subject
to a regulation of state, at once humiliating and extraordinary. When
the people have conceived an opinion of his ill-government, which
is sometimes insidiously infused into them by the artifice of his
discontented ministers, they send a deputation to him with a present
of parrots' eggs, as a mark of its authenticity, to represent to him
that the burden of government must have so far fatigued him that
they consider it full time for him to repose from his cares and
indulge himself with a little sleep. He thanks his subjects for their
attention to his ease, retires to his own apartment as if to sleep, and
there gives directions to his women to strangle him. This is
immediately executed, and his son quietly ascends the throne upon
the usual terms of holding the reins of government no longer than
whilst he merits the approbation of the people." About the year
1774, a king of Eyeo, whom his ministers attempted to remove in
the customary manner, positively refused to accept the proffered
parrots' eggs at their hands, telling them that he had no mind to
take a nap, but on the contrary was resolved to watch for the
benefit of his subjects. The ministers, surprised and indignant at his
recalcitrancy, raised a rebellion, but were defeated with great
slaughter, and thus by his spirited conduct the king freed himself
from the tyranny of his councillors and established a new
precedent for the guidance of his successors. However, the old
custom seems to have revived and persisted until late in the
nineteenth century, for a Catholic missionary, writing in 1884,
speaks of the practice as if it were still in vogue. Another
missionary, writing in 1881, thus describes the usage of the Egbas
and the Yorubas of West Africa: "Among the customs of the country
one of the most curious is unquestionably that of judging, and
punishing the king. Should he have earned the hatred of his people
by exceeding his rights, one of his councillors, on whom the heavy
duty is laid, requires of the prince that he shall `go to sleep,' which
means simply `take poison and die.' If his courage fails him at the
supreme moment, a friend renders him this last service, and quietly,
without betraying the secret, they prepare the people for the news
of the king's death. In Yoruba the thing is managed a little
differently. When a son is born to the king of Oyo, they make a
model of the infant's right foot in clay and keep it in the house of
the elders (ogboni). If the king fails to observe the customs of the
country, a messenger, without speaking a word, shows him his
child's foot. The king knows what that means. He takes poison and
goes to sleep." The old Prussians acknowledged as their supreme
lord a ruler who governed them in the name of the gods, and was
known as "God's Mouth." When he felt himself weak and ill, if he
wished to leave a good name behind him, he had a great heap
made of thorn-bushes and straw, on which he mounted and
delivered a long sermon to the people, exhorting them to serve the
gods and promising to go to the gods and speak for the people.
Then he took some of the perpetual fire which burned in front of the
holy oak-tree, and lighting the pile with it burned himself to
death. 15