RCG-I Seasonal Salon Fall Equinox 2008

Abuk, Dinka goddess of creative abundance

The Dinka people of the African Sudan envision Abuk as the primal woman, as do their neighbors the Nuer and Atuot. She was born very tiny but fully formed, then put like a bean in a big pot, where she swelled up overnight. The creator god stingily gave Abuk and her mate Garang only one grain of corn to eat each day. The human race would have starved had Abuk not taken what people needed and ground it into meal. Some sources call Abuk’s behavior "greedy," but the term is not typically used perjoratively considering the outcome.

In addition to Garang, another male divinity appears in connection with Abuk, as son or as husband. Deng, the rain god, joined with Abuk as river goddess to bring abundance. They had three children, the sons Kur-Konga and Gurung-Deet (whether this is the same figure as Garang is unclear), and a daughter, Ai-Yak. Some narratives offer two daughters for the goddess, Candit and Nyaliep, both originally young women who drowned and thus became divine. Candit returned to earth for a time as a human wife, but after establishing her lineage among humans, she returned to her watery home.

A frightening figure called Lwal Durrajok appears in the myth that Abunk created people from fat that she held over fire until it was soft as putty. She molded the individual people and, after they dried and hardened, sent them across the road that connected heaven and earth. But when she went to get more wood for her fire, Lwal Durrajok stole to her hearth and made badly formed humans that he sent down to earth.

When he realized that Abuk and Deng were coming, he too ran away down to earth, pursuading a little bird to bite the path in half, so that the connection between earth and heaven was permanently severed. Once on earth, he pledged to make all the wrongly formed humans right. To do so, he lit a huge pot of fat, into which he plunged the cripples, who thus met horrible deaths.

Abuk, as a divinity of fertility, is connected with women’s fecundity as well. Her symbols include the moon, snakes and sheep. Sheep were considered excellent sacrifices to her and were sometimes drowned in order to gain Abuk’s good will, for as a water-goddess, she received offerings placed in her waters. Among the Nuer, the first millet of the season, as well as beer and tobacco, were considered appropriate offerings to toss into streams in Abuk’s honor. Abuk is called "daughter of fireflies" and "leopard of the night," both names that reinforce her connection to water.

In some Atuot myths, the name of the primal woman is given as Acol ("the called one"). At the time she was born, men and women lived separately; women kept cows, and men kept buffaloes. Men wore vaginas on their arms so that, when they wanted to have sex, they had merely to untie and reposition them. The women had intercourse with the river-water. At last one man, Raan, came to the women’s camp, where he saw that they wore their vaginas differently. The women were intrigued by Raan’s penis and all asked them to show them how it worked. By the time he had finished, Raan was dead.

After a time, Raan’s fellows realized he was missing and came looking for him. They found a village of women who had drifted into lassitude since experiencing sex with Raan. So the men threw their armband vaginas into the forest and joined with the women. The women demanded that they give up their buffalo and that to gain a woman, a man would have to pay in cattle.

Good sources for information on Abuk and other African divinities:

Burton, John W. "’The Moon is a Sheep’: A Feminine Principle in Atuot Cosmology." Man, New Series, Vol. 16, No 3 (Sept 1981), p. 444, 447.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
Lienhardt, Godfrey. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.
Ray, Benjamin C. African Religions: Symbol, Ritual and Community. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.