Shilluk Kingdom

The Shilluk Kingdom was the Nilotic kingdom of the White Nile's left bank in what is now South Sudan, founded by the hero Nyikang, who probably lived in the second half of the fifteenth century and whom the Shilluk revere as half man, half crocodile. From the royal residence at Fashoda the Reth, the divine king, ruled a dense riverside population of cattle keepers and grain growers through clan heads and age sets, and the kingdom's canoes commanded the Nile traffic between the Sudd and Khartoum. Shilluk war parties raided Dinka, Nuer and Funj alike, and Funj, Fur and Egyptian armies all learned to respect the river line. In the nineteenth century the Turco-Egyptian advance pressed up the White Nile with steamers and guns; the slave raids broke the riverside order, the Reths became clients of Khartoum, and by 1865 the independent kingdom had ended, though the Reth still reigns as a traditional king today.