more active to punish any disrespect or neglect. Hence as a family venerated the father of the house both in life and after death, which was the germ of ancestral worship, so the tribe would venerate the great men, the chieftains and the heroes, whose exploits had won so much not only for their own particular houses, but for the whole clan. The Shilluk, a tribe who dwell upon the western bank of the White Nile, and who are governed by a single king, still maintain the worship of Nyakang, the hero who founded the dynasty and settled this people in their present territory. Nyakang is conceived as having been a man, although he did not actually die but vanished from sight. Yet he is not altogether divine, for the great god of the Shilluk, the creator of mankind and the world, Juok, is without form, invisible and omnipresent. He is far greater than and far above Nyakang, and he reigns in those highest heavens where neither the prayers of man can reach his ears, nor can he smell the sweet savour of sacrifice.
Not only Nyakang, but each of the Shilluk kings after death is worshipped, and the grave of the monarch becomes a sanctuary, so that throughout the villages there are many shrines tended by certain old men and old women, where a ritual which is practically identical in each separate place is elaborately conducted. Indeed, the principal element in the religion of the Shilluk may be said to be the veneration of their dead kings.[5]
Other African tribes also worship their dead kings. The Baganda, whose country Uganda lies at the actual source of the Nile, think of their dead kings as being equal to the gods, and the temples of the deceased monarchs are built and maintained with the utmost care. Formerly when a king died hundreds of men were killed so that their spirits might attend upon the spirit of their master, and what is very significant as showing that these people believe the king and his ghostly followers could return in forms sufficiently corporeal to perform the very material function of eating is that on certain solemn days at earliest dawn the sacred tomtom is beaten at the temple gates and crowds of worshippers bring baskets of food for the dead king and his followers lest being hungry he should become angered and punish the whole tribe.[6]
In Kiziba, which lies on the western side of the Lake Victoria Nyanza, the religion of the natives consists of the worship
