Summary

This film presents a compelling visual and aural analysis of Shilluk kingship in 1975, and provides a very useful complement to Evans-Pritchard’s 1948 text, The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk. Although the Reth (king) has been reduced to the status of second-class magistrate in dispute settlement by the Sundanese government, he is still the focus of political and national identity for a Shilluk people composed of competing territorial groupings. At the death of the Reth, his spirit passes into the Nile.