Chapter 24 Killing the God-King: The king was put to death for failing

If the higher gods lived far from the cares and noises of earthly life, and were believed to be mortal, one could not expect the same fate from a god dwelling in a feeble physical shell, although we hear that there are some in Africa. The king thought he could live forever with witchcraft.We have already said that primitive peoples sometimes believed that their safety and even the safety of the world were connected with the life of these god-men or gods incarnate.So, naturally, out of a concern for their own life, they were especially concerned for his life.But no amount of care and precaution could prevent the man-god from growing old, weakening, and finally dying.His admirers had to foresee this tragic inevitability and cope with it as well as they could.This is a very dire danger, for if the course of nature depends upon the life of a man-god, what calamity would be wrought by the gradual decline of man-god's powers and their final annihilation in death?There is only one way to prevent danger.The man-god must be killed at the first sign of decline in his powers, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before the coming decline can do serious damage.The advantages of putting a god to death instead of letting him die of old age are quite obvious to primitive man.If a man-god dies naturally, as we say, then, according to primitive man, either his soul left his body of its own accord, refusing to return, or, as is more commonly said, it was taken away by a devil or wizard, who spared no effort or It is the devil or wizard who hinders the return of the wandering soul.In either case, the worshipers of the Man-God have lost their souls, and they cannot prosper, and even their very existence is threatened.Even if they could manage to catch the soul of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils, and pass it on to his heirs, it would not have served their purpose; for, since dying of disease, his soul must It had left his body in the final stages of debility and exhaustion, and being so debilitated, it would remain exhausted and immortal in anyone's body.And by killing him, his admirers could, first, surely capture his spirit as it escaped and pass it on to a proper successor; It can guarantee that the world will not decline due to the decline of man and god.Therefore, by killing the man-god, and passing it on to a vigorous successor in the prime of his soul, every object is accomplished, and all calamities are averted.

Cambodia's mysterious fire and water kings are not allowed to die naturally.Therefore if either of them was seriously ill, the elders thought he would not recover, and stabbed him to death.We have already said that the Congolese believed that if their high priest Chitom died naturally, the world would be destroyed, and the earth could only be sustained by his power and speciality.In this case, it will immediately disappear into nothingness.Therefore, when he was sick and threatened to die, the intended successor would go to his house with a rope or a club, and strangle him, or beat him to death.The kings of the Ethiopians of Meroi were revered as gods; but, when the priests pleased, they sent to the king, and commanded him to die, saying that this was the decree of the gods, as a basis for their orders.This order was obeyed by kings until the reign of Urgamemnes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II, king of Egypt.Urgamenes, whose Greek education had freed him from the superstitions of his own people, dared to disregard the orders of the priests, and led a company of soldiers into the Temple of Gold, and slew the priests.

A custom of this kind seems to have prevailed in this part of Africa down to the present day, and among some tribes of the Fazol the king went every day to conduct his business under a particular tree.If, through sickness or any other cause, he was unable to perform this duty for three whole days, he was hung from this tree by a rope, and two small knives were pressed into the circle, and when the weight of the king's body pulled the rope tight, the two The knife cut his throat.The custom of killing the god-king at the first sign of weakness or old age was until recently among the Siluks of the White Nile, and only now has it really died out.In this regard, Dr. CG Seligman has conducted careful investigation in recent years.The Silukians' respect for their king seems to have been chiefly based on the belief that the king was the reincarnation of the god Niakon, the half-human, half-god hero who founded the dynasty.For this tribe to settle on the land they now live, the spirit of Niakon, a god or demigod, should be attached to the present king. endowed with the nature of God.However, although the Shilluks did have a high degree of religious respect for their king and were careful in case they died accidentally, they held "the belief that the king must not be sick or old, lest he be killed at any time." As his energy dwindles, the animals will get sick and fail to multiply, the crops will rot in the ground, and the people will suffer from disease and die more and more."In order to prevent these disasters, it was a custom among the Shilluks to put the king to death if he showed signs of poor health or waning energy.One of the great signs of old age was his inability to satisfy the sexual desires of his wives, who were very numerous and lived in many houses in Vashta.When signs of this weakness manifest, the wife reports to the chief.It is said that the chief had to inform the king of the bad news by covering his face and knees with a white cloth while the king fell asleep in the sweltering heat of the afternoon.The execution of the death sentence followed.A hut was built for this purpose: the king was ushered into the hut, lay down, laid his head on the lap of a grown girl, and barricaded the door of the hut; the two were left without food, water, or fire, and starved Suffocated.This is an old custom, but it was done away with about five centuries ago, because a king showed too much pain when he died like this.It is said that after the chief announced the king's fate to him, he was hanged in the hut specially built for the purpose.

According to Dr. Seligman's investigation, it seems that King Shilluk was not only killed according to certain rituals when he first showed signs of aging, but even when he was still strong, he may be attacked by his opponents at any time. The crown he had to fight to the death.According to the tradition of the Xiluke tribe, any son of the current king has the right to fight the king in this way, and if he can kill the king, he will rule instead of him.Because every king has many wives and concubines, and many sons, there are not very few people who are eligible to stand for the throne at any time, and the life of the current king must be in danger at any time.But to attack him, to have any hope of success, would be at night.As the king was always surrounded by his friends and guards during the day, it was difficult for an aspirant to the throne to hope to get close to him and succeed in one blow.It's different at night.Then the guards dispersed, and the king was alone with his beloved wives in the court, with no one to protect him but a few shepherds, whose huts were some distance away from where he lived.Therefore, the dark night is the time when the king is vulnerable.It is said that he often passed such hours in constant vigilance, in full armor, prowling about the house, watching the darkest shadows, or standing silently alert in some dark corner like a sentinel.When at last the adversary came, the struggle went on silently, save for the clash of spear and shield, and the king did not call the shepherds to help him, for that was a matter of honor.

Like their founder, Niakon himself, each Shilluk king has a shrine to worship after his death, and the shrine is set up over his tomb, which is always in the village where he was born.The king's burial shrine, similar to that of Niacon, consisted of several huts surrounded by a fence, one of which was built over the king's tomb, and the rest were inhabited by the caretakers.The shrines of Niakon are indeed not different from the shrines of the kings, and the form of religious ceremonies held in all the shrines is the same, with only slight differences in details, the difference obviously being the dignity given to the shrines of Niakon Much bigger.The king's burial shrine is overseen by a number of aged men or women as many as those who protect the shrine of Niakon.These were usually the widows or elderly menservants of the late king, who were succeeded by their descendants after their death.Also, in the shrine of the king's cemetery, animals are used to offer sacrifices, just like the sacrifices in the Niakon shrine.

In general, the religion of the Shilluks seems chiefly to be the worship of their holy king or god-king, dead or living.They believed that the flesh of these kings was animated by a god who gave life to the semi-mythical (perhaps essentially historical) founder of the dynasty, passed down from generation to generation to the present day.Since the Xiluke people regard their kings as the incarnation of gods, and the prosperity of people, animals, and crops all depend on them secretly, they naturally show the greatest respect to them and love them meticulously.Therefore, if the god king's health is poor or his physical strength is slightly weak, he will be executed.However strange this Shilluk custom may seem to us, it is directly due to their deep respect for the god-king, and to their eagerness to preserve him in the most efficient state, or, more correctly, to preserve Not only that, we can go one step further and say that the way they kill the king is the best proof of their reverence for their king.The reason is what we have already talked about. They believe that the life or spirit of the king is consistent with the prosperity of the whole country. would die from a pandemic of disease.Therefore, in their view, the only way to eliminate the disaster is to kill the king while he is still healthy, so that the gods he inherited from his ancestors, which are still energetic and not weakened by old age, can be passed on to his successors. .In this respect the sign generally said to determine the death of a king is of great significance; when he is no longer able to satisfy the sexual desires of his many wives, in other words, when he is partially or completely unable to reproduce. When he succeeds, that is the moment of his death, the moment when he gives way to a more energetic successor.Putting it together with other reasons for killing the king, this point shows that the prosperity of people, animals, and crops is correspondingly dependent on the king’s fertility, so that the disappearance of this power in the king will cause people, animals, and plants to die. Therefore, it will not take long for all life, the life of human beings, animals, and plants to completely disappear.It is no wonder that the Shilluks, with such disasters before them, must have taken great care not to have their king die of old age and disease, what we call a natural death.Their attitude towards the death of a king has a characteristic. They don't say that it is death, they don't say that a certain king is dead, they only say that he "departed", like his god ancestor, the first two monarchs of the dynasty Niacon Like Dag, both of them are said to be not dead but missing.In other places, such as Rome and Uganda, early kings also mysteriously disappeared. These similar legends indicate a similar custom: kill the king in order to preserve his life.

On the whole, the theories and practices of the Shilluks concerning the god-kings are very similar to those of the priests of Nemi, the kings of the forest, if I am right about the latter.In both we see that the prosperity of men, animals, and plants was believed to depend on the life of the god-king, and that the god-king died violently, whether in single combat or otherwise, for the sake of Let their divinity be passed on to vigorous heirs, unaffected by old age and decay, for any such decline in him, in the eyes of the god-king's worshipers, would cause corresponding reactions in men, animals, and crops. recession.The custom of killing the god-kings, and especially the method of transferring the god-kings' divinity to their successors, will be dealt with more fully later in this book.Let's talk about the general practice of this custom with an example.

Marti Anfu was a powerful king or emperor of the Angola interior.Carla, one of the weaker kings of the country, related to the Portuguese expedition the circumstances of Mattienfu's death as follows.He said: "According to the usual practice, our Marty Anfu either died in the war or died a violent death. The present Marty Anfu, because of his exorbitant taxes, has lived long enough, must not escape this final fate." .When we learned this, and decided that he should be killed, we asked him to fight our enemies, when we all went with him and his family, and we lost some lives. If he Still alive and uninjured, we went back to fight again. After three or four days of fighting, we suddenly left him and his family, leaving him in the hands of the enemy, to the mercy of fate. Seeing that he was abandoned, he tried to He erected the throne, sat down, and called his family around him. Then ordered his mother to come forward and kneel at his feet. First he beheaded her, then he killed his son, his Many wives and relatives, and finally killed his dearest wife, Anna Kuro. Then Martyn put on luxurious clothes, and waited for his own death. Then came his death, which was brought by an officer and he was sent by the mighty chiefs of the neighborhood, Kanicinha and Kanika. This officer first cut off his legs and arms at the joints, and finally his head; All the chiefs withdrew from their tents, lest they should see him killed. It was my duty to stay and watch him die, and to mark the place where the two great chiefs, enemies of Marty Anfu, laid his head and arms. Go. They also took all the property of the late Sovereign and his family, and sent it to their own lodgings. Then I arranged for the funeral of the late Marty Anfu's body, and when it was done, I returned to him and proclaimed a new government. Then I returned to the place where his head, legs, and arms were laid, and redeemed them with forty slaves, and the goods and other property of the dead man. I gave them to the one who had declared his successor The new Matthias. That's what happened to many Mattiens, and it's what the incumbents will face."

The custom of killing a king at the first sign of any physical defect also prevailed two centuries ago in the kingdom of Kafu in Sufala.As we have already said, kings such as Sufala were regarded as gods by their people, to whom they asked for rain and sunshine.However, we know from an old Portuguese historian that a minor physical defect, such as the loss of a tooth, is sufficient reason for killing a god-man: "The king was Any disaster, or natural physical defect, such as infertility, infectious disease, loss of front teeth, disfigurement, or any other defect or misfortune, according to the old custom of the country, the king had to kill himself by poisoning himself. They committed suicide in order to eliminate This kind of defect, because the king should have no defects. If not, it would be better for him to die for his honor, so that he can be reborn in another life, with a perfect body and everything perfect. However, when I was there, the king The old Quatif (king) was unwilling to imitate his predecessors in this respect. He was cautious and terrible, and when he lost a front tooth, he announced it to the whole country, so that everyone knew that he had lost a tooth. One tooth, and recognize him when he sees his missing front teeth. His predecessors committed suicide for this kind of thing, it is very stupid, he does not want to do it, on the contrary, when he dies at the end of his life , he will regret it, because his life was so necessary to preserve the kingdom, defend it against its enemies, and recommend it to his successors to follow his example."

The Sufala king who dared to live on despite losing his front teeth, was a brave innovator like the Ethiopian king Ergamens.We may presume that the Ethiopian kings were put to death for the same reasons as the Zulu and Sufala kings, due to physical defects or signs of infirmity.It can also be presumed that the oracle, on which the priests relied on the authority to kill the king, said that the rule of the country by the allegedly defective king would cause great disasters, as the oracle warned the Spartans against "lame rule", that is, Say, don't lame kings rule.Although this custom of executing kings was abolished a long time ago, Ethiopians still pay attention to their body, physical strength and appearance when choosing kings.This provides some confirmation for our above inference.To this day, the Sultan of Vadai still cannot have obvious physical defects. King Angeyi has a little defect on his body, such as missing one or half of his teeth or having an old scar, so he cannot wear the crown.According to Akell's book, as well as many other authoritative sources, no physically handicapped king could rule Ireland at Tara [the capital of ancient Ireland].So when the great king Komerk imitate was blinded in one eye by accident, he immediately retired.