Other scholars believed that the ideological
sources of kingship seemed to be rooted in
African traditions of the greatest antiquity and
argued that classical Nile Valley culture emerged
out of a remote East African substratum. Many
striking similarities between classical Nile Valley
kingship traditions and the traditional kingships
of the Baganda kings of Uganda and the Shilluk
kings of southern Sudan, for example, were high-
lighted. According to the late Senegalese
Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop, the concept of
kingship is, by all accounts, one of the most sig-
nificant indications of the similarities between
Egypt and the rest of Africa. Diop focuses on the
Sed festival, which symbolically portrayed the
king as “dying” so that he could be ritually reju-
venated. The king’s health and vitality reflected
the vigor and strength of his kingdom, and there-
fore his rejuvenation ritual represented the revi-
talization of the state.
According to Diop, similar practices as the Sed
festival in ancient Egypt can be found among
the Bunyoro kingdom of Uganda and the Hausa
kingdoms of Northern Nigeria. The Africanist
and ethnolinguist Christopher Ehret argues that
Egyptian divine kingship was an offspring of
Sudanic Sacral kingship, a tradition that is still
much alive in Sudanic Africa today.
ContemporaryExpressionsThere are other similarities in Africa that reflect
the role of the king as divine and the chief priest
and the leader of the cult. The Oba, king of the
Edo-speaking people of Nigeria and Benin in West
Africa, represents the tradition of kingship where
monarchs are viewed as sacred and living deities
participating with the gods and ancestors in a
sacred divine community. The role of the Oba
among the Edo-speaking people of Nigeria further
illustrates the cosmology of kingship in ancient
Nubia and Egypt. This tradition of kingship is
also evident in the Kuba kingdom of the Congo,
where the Nyimi (King) is understood as “a
descendent of the creator-god.”
The king as the premiere functionary and
leader of the cult is uniquely expressed among the
Asantehene (King) of the Asante in Ghana, West
Africa. It is the Asantehene that enters the sacred
shrine of the ancestors and makes food offerings
to the sacred stools of royal ancestors on behalf of
the kingdom during periodical festivals called
adae. This communal ritual celebrates and rein-
forces the intimate link between humanity and the
spirit world.
In ancient Nubian and Egyptian temples, the
most pervasive and enduring literary formula
inscribed on the walls was the classic phrasehtp di
Nisut, translated as “an offering that the king
gives.” The Egyptian king (Nisut), like the
Asantehene, was always represented either giving
food offerings to the various divinities or present-
ing the symbol for truth, justice, and righteous-
ness,maat.
In both contemporary and classical Africa, the
office of sacred and divine kingship epitomizes the
union of the mundane and sacred dimensions of
life where ancestral traditions and current and
future imperatives are negotiated by the monarch
in service of family, clan, and nation.Salim FarajiSeealsoDivinitiesFurtherReadings
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Khamit.
Assman, J. (1996).The Mind of Egypt. Cambridge, MA:
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Bilolo, M. (1994).Métaphysique Pharaonique. Munich,
Germany, & Kinshasa, Congo: Publications
Universitaires Africaines.
Diop, C. A. (1991).Civilization or Barbarism:An
Authentic Anthropology. Trenton, NJ: Lawrence Hill
Books.
Faulkner, R. O. (1969).The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid
Texts. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Frankfort, H. (1978).Kingship and the Gods:A Study
of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration
of Society and Nature. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Hornung, E. (1996).Conceptions of God in Ancient
Egypt:The One and the Many. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Hornung, E. (1999).History of Ancient Egypt:An
Introduction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Karenga, M. (2006).Maat:The Moral Ideal in Ancient
Egypt: A Study in Classical African Ethics. Los
Angeles: University of Sankore Press.366 Kings