The Religious Nile

Water, Ritual and Society Since Ancient Egypt

Terje Oestigaard

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781838609634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

The Nile is arguably the most famous river in the world. For millennia, the search for its source defeated emperors and explorers. Yet the search for its source also contained a religious quest - a search for the origin of its divine and life-giving waters. Terje Oestigaard reveals how the beliefs associated with the river have played a key role in the cultural development and make-up of the societies and civilizations associated with it. Drawing upon his personal experience and fieldwork in Africa, including details of rites and ceremonies now fast disappearing, the author brings out in rich detail the religious and spiritual meanings attached to the life-giving waters by those whose lives are so bound to the river. Part religious quest, part exploration narrative, the author shows how this mighty river is a powerful source for a greater understanding of human nature, society and religion.

1Sources of Religion

APPROACHING SOURCES

One hundred and fifty years after John Hanning Speke came to the outlet of Lake Victoria in Uganda and identified it as the source of the White Nile in 28 July 1862, I came for the first time to this historic place. Approaching the source of the Nile, on 21 July 1862, Speke writes:

I told my men they ought to shave their heads and bathe in the holy river, the cradle of Moses – the waters of which, sweetened with sugar, men carry all the way from Egypt to Mecca, and sell to the pilgrims. But Bombay [the assistant], who is a philosopher of the Epicurean school, said, ‘We don’t look on those things in the same fanciful manner that you do; we are contented with all the commonplaces of life, and look for nothing beyond the present. If things don’t go well, it is God’s will; and if they do go well, that is His will also.’¹

When coming to the outlet of Lake Victoria on 28 July 1862, the search for the source was over (fig. 1). Speke concludes in his Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile: ‘The expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old Father Nile without any doubt rises in the Victoria N’yanza, and, as I had foretold, that lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief.’² He continues:

I now christened the ‘stones’ Ripon falls, after the nobleman who presided over the Royal Geographical Society when my expedition was got up; and the arm of water from which the Nile issued, Napoleon Channel, in token of respect to the French Geographical Society, for the honor they had done me, just before leaving England, in presenting me with their gold medal for the discovery of the Victoria N’yanza.³

The importance of finding the source has to be seen in conjunction with the history of the searches for the sources in Europe and the global relevance of the Nile from the nineteenth century onwards. Moreover, in European mythology, the Nile had a special role. Speke writes, ‘the N’yanza is the great reservoir that floated Father Moses on his first adventurous sail – the Nile’.⁴ The Nile had a fundamental role in the Old Testament and hence in the history of Christianity, giving it special importance in the European context. Still, unlike Gish Abay, the source of the Blue Nile, which is a remote spring in the highlands of Abyssinia, the source of the White Nile documented by Speke at the outlet of Lake Victoria has been seen as a colonial construct and allegedly devoid of indigenous cultural and religious importance. Gish Abay, by contrast, has strong cultural and religious significance. It is believed that the heavenly River Gihon flows directly from Paradise to this specific spring, thus linking heaven and earth and making the water and the river deeply holy.⁵ In the written history to date, the source of the White Nile is not invested with comparable cosmological significance by any religion. Instead, it is generally held that there is not much to report about the water at this place in terms of culture and religion. This could not be further from the truth. In the river, innumerable spirits reside, some more powerful than others, and the most important of them is located only 8 km from the source at Bujagali Falls. This spirit is part of a wider water cosmology, which includes the source as the second most important and powerful water spirit in the Busoga Kingdom and cosmology at the outlet of Lake Victoria.

1. John Hanning Speke at Ripon Falls and the source of the White Nile, 28 July 1862. Painting at Speke Hotel, Kampala.

In discussing sources of rivers, in particular of the Nile, it is important to note that a source can be many things simultaneously, some partly overlapping and others partly contradictory. Hydrologically, a source is the remotest spring or discharge point of a river – the very starting point for measuring the river’s length. Thus, although rivers have innumerable sources or small tributaries forming larger tributaries and so on, in terms of ultimate length there will only be one source. Religiously, a source can originate at any place along the river’s course, but most often it is a fountain, a waterfall or some subterranean source, which may also be a link in one way or another to all the flows of cosmos in the celestial realms. From a religious point of view, river sources can be unrelated to the hydrological sources. Given the aim of studying the role and importance of water and religion in history, these religious sources are of utmost importance, since many hydrological sources are often found and documented quite late in history, and often lack religious significance. In many cases it is the religious sources and not the hydrological ones that have defined history, or at least the mythology that has shaped history. Historically, some sources are historical places given major importance in the history of ideas and development. The history of the source of the White Nile has, to a large extent, been constructed by the British since Speke’s discovery in 1862. But, as will become evident, this source is also a religious source, and even a hydrological source, even though it is not the remotest spring upstream in the Nile Basin.

Although Speke labelled the outlet of Lake Victoria as the source of the White Nile, most likely he did not see the real source, which existed, and still exists, there. At the historic source of the Nile documented by Speke there are two small adjacent islands. The Western Island is the main tourist destination for visitors coming to see the source, and there is a blue sign on which is written: ‘The source of R. Nile. Jinja. World’s longest river.’ Few visitors pay much attention to the other seemingly irrelevant island just a stone’s throw to the east. At the southernmost end of this island stand some huge trees. Because of the extremely rich bird life, all these trees and the nearby ground have been whitened by countless droppings. Next to the trees there is a small opening on which can be found a few apparently unspectacular remains of pots and minor wooden structures. But the importance of these islands is not because Speke in 1862 identified Ripon Falls as the source of the Nile, but because there is indeed a very powerful source of the Nile flowing between the islands at this point.

Today, the source of the Nile is not much celebrated in the guidebooks: ‘a visit to this once lovely site is now a disappointment [...] the site looks basically at a passing river’.⁶ True, the Ripon Falls are gone because of the Owen Falls Dam that was opened in 1954, and today the name marks the place where visitors embark in tourist boats to the small islands now seen as the source. When standing at this spot, one inevitably looks at the large billboard proclaiming ‘Welcome to the source of the great river Nile – Jinja, Uganda.’ This billboard is worthy of comment. Written in huge letters are the words ‘Uganda’s heritage’. These do not, however, refer to the Nile or its source. Rather, they advertise the sponsor of this billboard, Bell Lager Beer. Below, one reads: ‘On the western bank of the river is an obelisk marking the spot where Speke stood for hours when he saw the source of the River Nile, making it known to the outside world.’

The abovementioned islands are located in the bay named by Speke after Napoleon III, as the billboard records: ‘The bay behind this billboard through which the waters of Lake Victoria funnel in the Nile is called the Napoleon Gulf.’ But it is barely possible to see the bay or the islands because of the size of the billboard. Nevertheless, whatever the billboard’s other shortcomings, there is one intriguing and important piece of information on it: ‘“Omugga Kiyira” is the local name for the River Nile.’ Thousands of visitors have read these words without knowing what they mean, but behind this seemingly trivial information there lies a whole cosmology, which certainly makes the source of the White Nile an actual source, and a very important one, but also a very different source from the one Speke found. And this source has utmost importance today, being part of the greater water cosmology of this area among the Busoga.

In 2012 I read the text on this billboard as most tourists do, without knowing what it meant or the implications. The next year when I was back I did not make a discovery: it was the boatman, who is also named Moses, who told me what it means.

When standing next to the ‘The source of R. Nile’ sign and looking carefully across to the other small island and towards Lake Victoria, one may notice something peculiar about the water. There is a current at this spot. At first it may be difficult to see what is special unless one pays close attention, but the water flows the wrong way!

The two small islands are called Obuzzinga Nalubale, meaning the two small islands of the Lake God (fig. 2). The two islands are located in the gulf where all of the waters of Lake Victoria – the second largest lake in the world after Lake Superior – leaves the lake and starts flowing north before eventually reaching Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. But at the very source, in the middle of the river between the two small islands, something in the water creates a current flowing southwards. The water from the lake is forced back at this point, and one may see banana leaves floating in both directions: some following the flow of the Victoria Nile northwards and some in the opposite direction, southwards. Moreover, while the water in the Nile coming from the lake is rather muddy and polluted, the colour of the water flowing southwards is crystal clear and tastes perfect. Even its temperature feels cooler.

2. Omugga Kiyira – the source of the White Nile in between the two islands. The tourist island is to the right and the sacrificial island to the left.

The reason for this strange occurrence is that the source of the White Nile here is literally a source, not only geologically but also spiritually and religiously. If one looks carefully along the shores of the tourist island while standing near the sign, one clearly sees that fresh water is welling up from below. At this spot, there is an underground source of fresh water. Not only is this water crystal clear, but it is also very powerful. The volume and force of this water is uncertain, but it is obviously very forceful, since it actually pushes back the rest of the water in the Nile at this point. The force of this source would have been perceived as even mightier before the Owen Falls Dam was constructed. Just downstream from the source, the Ripon Falls would have offered powerful visual and aural evidence of the tremendous intensity of the water. And whereas all the other river water would have turned into thundering cascades northwards, the water from the source would have flowed the other way.

‘Kiyira’ is the name of the specific spirit coming from the source. In the local language, ‘Kiyira’ means river and ‘Omugga’ means coming from below. This river god or spirit is nothing other than the waters welling up at the very source of the Nile and forcing the water from Lake Victoria backwards. And this water spirit is very powerful. Sacrifices are made to it on the other small island just across from the tourist island. In the river and all around there are numerous other spirits, and the small wooden structures on this island are some of the shrines to them, including Kiyira. Thus, the source of the Nile is very special not only in the European tradition, but also in local cosmology, for it is the home of innumerable spirits and of river gods, and in particular Kiyira.

Thus, this place is definitely a source from a religious point of view, but not in a conventional sense of a river’s most remote spring or origin. This source is more like a fountain, but a very special fountain since it is subterranean in the middle of the outlet of Lake Victoria. Although Speke claimed that the ‘lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief’, these beliefs at the source of the White Nile have little to do with Christianity and European tradition. The source is a fountain of wealth and a fundamental part of the Busoga kingdom’s water cosmology. But the spirits also enable witchcraft. In many cases, it is difficult to distinguish between propitiation of water spirits and witchcraft, and to some extent the difference is in the eye of the beholder. Christians condemned all these practices as witchcraft and even among the Busoga healers they are perceived with ambivalence, since those who can bring the betterment may also bring malevolence. Still, Speke was also right, and even today among Christians in Uganda the historic source of the White Nile has a special importance precisely because it links Christians in Uganda with the Nile and Moses as described in the Bible (see Chapter 6).

In the traditional cosmology, the role and importance of the source at Ripon Falls has to be seen in relation to Bujagali Falls and Itanda Falls and to the associated hierarchy of water spirits. Bujagali Falls and Itanda Falls are respectively approximately 8 and 30 km north of the source following the Nile. Among the Busoga, all three falls have special religious significance. In each of the falls resides a river spirit or god. In fact, there are innumerable spirits, but there are three main spirits. Today, the spirits in the Ripon and Owen Falls have been flooded, but the underground water fountain at the source is as mighty...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• 1. Sources of Religion
• 2. The Source of the Blue Nile and Lake Tana in Ethiopia
• 3. From Lake Victoria to Murchison Falls in Uganda
• 4. The Sources in the Sky and Rainmaking
• 5. The River Civilization in the Desert
• 6. Water and World Religions Along the Nile
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• eCopyright