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Updated: June 26, 2025
It stated that he had arrived at Fashoda on July 10, having been instructed by his Government to occupy the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the confluence of the Bahr-el-Jebel, and also the Shilluk country on the left bank of the White Nile as far as Fashoda.
It went on to say that he had concluded a treaty with the Shilluk chiefs by which they placed the country under the protection of France, and that he had sent this treaty to his Government for ratification by way of Abyssinia, as well as by the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
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."
This explanation of the rule that the King of the Wood had to be slain by his successor at least renders that rule perfectly intelligible. It is strongly supported by the theory and practice of the Shilluk, who put their divine king to death at the first signs of failing health, lest his decrepitude should entail a corresponding failure of vital energy on the corn, the cattle, and men.
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.
The worthy old Lieutenant Ali Gaffoon, a Shilluk, who had been in his youth a sheikh and soldier, and who had fought in Mexico for Maximilian, and since entered the Khedive's service, soon had crowds of his countrymen and countrywomen flocking to see him.
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.
Let us now turn back to the preceding chapter, and compare the position of the people of the Shilluk tribe, and the subjects of the Grail King, with that of the ancient Babylonians, as set forth in their Lamentations for Tammuz. There we find that the absence of the Life-giving deity was followed by precisely the same disastrous consequences; Vegetation fails
On Sunday, 18th September, the Sirdar despatched a Shilluk runner to go by land with a letter to Major Marchand telling him of the approach of the Egyptian flotilla. Next morning a reply was brought out to the "Dal" when it was within sight of Fashoda by an officer in a row-boat flying the French flag, that the garrison would receive him as a friendly visitor.
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