There continues to be a debate among certain
African intellectuals, political theorists, and lead-
ers about the contemporary relevance of African
kingship for the development and forward
progress of Africa. Some argue that the institution
is antiquated and incompatible with the demands
of globalization and technological innovation.
Others argue that African kingship is indispens-
able to the social, cultural, and political matura-
tion of African civilization.
What is apparent is that the institution of king-
ship in Africa is a pervasive and enduring reality
that is deeply embedded in the social fabric and
cultural memory of African society. Why has the
institution of kingship historically emerged as so
fundamental to African social, cultural, and politi-
cal life? Is the institution of kingship simply about
adhering to a system of traditional governance, or
are there factors of more philosophical and cosmo-
logical importance that need to be considered here?
Considering that Africa produced the first insti-
tutions of sacred and divine kingship and the
longest, continuous established monarchy in
human history in the civilizations of ancient
Nubia and Egypt, it is reasonable to assert that
kingship emerged concurrently with the evolution
of African civilization. A brief survey of kingship
in ancient Nubia and Egypt provides insight into
the philosophical and cosmological underpinnings
of kingship throughout African civilization, as
well as demonstrates why kingship in Africa
emerged as a sacred and divine institution.
ClassicalAfricanKingshipAncient Nubian and Egyptian society and culture
was centered on the sacred office of divine king-
ship. Nubian and Egyptian kings were considered
to be divine and the progeny of the divine whose
duty it was to establish and restore unity, extend
justice, and defend the cosmic and social order.
The ideology of divine monarchy posited that the
king was the son of the god, a descendant of the
Supreme Being, sent to Earth to bring justice to
humanity and build temples for the gods.
From before the inception of the unified state
in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia in 3100 BC,
divine kingship was preeminent in ancient Nile
Valley civilization. The significance of kingship in
classical Nile Valley civilization was so central
that existence without it could not be conceived
and life void of divine monarchy equated to immi-
nent doom and chaos.
The most prominent example of this literary tra-
dition from classical Nile Valley culture is the
Prophecy of Nefertidated to 1938–1909 BC during
the reign of king Amenemhet I in the Middle
Kingdom. Neferti describes a future of foreign
invasion, civil war, religious impropriety, and social
decadence, but exclaims that a king from the south,
an Amunian and son of a Nubian woman, will rise
and restore order in the Two Lands. It is important
to note here that this “prophecy” equates restora-
tive kingship with Nubian initiatives.TheCosmologyofAfricanKingship
Kingship was the nucleus of classical Nile Valley
culture, a worldview that some scholars have
referred to as cosmotheism. The Egyptian concep-
tion of the universe was that of a sacred cosmos
that functioned as a “collective agency of various
different powers.” The Egyptian sacred cosmos
was also “pantheistic” and “polytheistic,” in the
sense that it posited an original divine essence of
the universe as the embodiment of all of life and
that it organized the diversity of divinities into
systems of kinship and relationship.
The king’s role in this cosmological system was
to exercise his authority as a representative of
divine power and to perpetuate cosmic order by
maintaining justice and fulfilling ritual obligations.
This cosmotheistic, relational polytheism that
some ascribe to ancient Egyptian cosmic under-
standings is similar to the philosophy of the
African theologian Okechukwu Ogbonnaya’s con-
ception of Egyptian divinity as communotheism.
Communotheism asserts that the divine is a
community of interdependent, interrelated gods
who are united by a common ontological source.
Ogbonnaya derives his notion of communothe-
ism from his explication of traditional African
concepts of the divine, where the plethora of gods
are principally represented as aggregates of fami-
lies organically linked by their essential nature.
Ogbonnaya is not alone in postulating the affin-
ity between classical Nile Valley conceptions of
communal divinity and divine kingship and tradi-
tional African cosmological formulations of
sacred kingship.Kings 365