page_title: Shilluk Kingdom
section_title: Origins and migration
hierarchical_section_title: Shilluk Kingdom / History / Origins and migration
caption_attribution_description: English: ATURWIC is the homestead mound of the Shilluk king at Pachodo (Fashoda) with his four huts built on top.
context_page_description: The Shilluk Kingdom was located along the banks of the White Nile river in modern South Sudan. Its capital and royal residence was in the town of Fashoda. According to their folk history and neighboring accounts, the kingdom was founded during the mid-fifteenth century CE by its first ruler, the demigod Nyikang. During the nineteenth century, the Shilluk were affected by military assaults from the Ottoman Empire and later British colonization in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The Shilluk king is currently not an independent political leader, but a traditional chieftain within the governments of South Sudan and Sudan. The current Shilluk king is His Majesty Reth Kwongo Dak Padiet who ascended to the throne in 1993.
  The monarchy has been political and religious in nature. The monarch guaranteed social order; his health and the health of the nation were intertwined. Worship is performed in rituals inspired by the national myth of Nyikang, the first Reth. The Shilluk monarchy and the beliefs of its people was studied in 1911 by Charles Seligman and in 1916 by British anthropologist James George Frazer in The Golden Bough. Seligman described the Shilluk form of government as a "sacred kingship".
context_section_description: According to Shilluk legends, the kingdom was founded in 1490. Its legendary first ruler ("Reth") was the hero known as Nyikang who claimed to be half-crocodile and possessed power over the rain. Nyikang was the son of a king, Okwa, who ruled a country located "far south near a large lake". This may be Lake Albert, where the Acholi live. After Okwa's death, Nyikang went to war with his brother Duwadh, the legitimate successor to the throne. Facing defeat, Nyikang left his homeland with his retinue and migrated northeast to Wau (near the Bahr el Ghazal, "river of gazelles" in Arabic). Here (known by the Shilluk as the Pothe Thuro) Nyikang married the daughter of Dimo, the local magician. After a conflict with Dimo Nyikang migrated north (crossing the Bahr el Ghazal) to Acietagwok (a Shilluk village about 30 kilometres (19 mi) west of the village of Tonga) around 1550. Nyikang then traveled to Nyilual, an uninhabited region west of the present town of Malakal. In the end, legends claim that Nyikang vanished in a whirlwind in the middle of a battle.
caption: Aturwik, the homestead mound of the Shilluk king at Fashoda with his four huts built on top. Photo by Charles Gabriel Seligman
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