Muonyjang

Muonyjang is followed by the Dinka, who herd cattle along the White Nile and across the Bahr el-Ghazal plains. Their ancestors left the Gezira as Christian Alodia crumbled in the thirteenth century.

The supreme being is Nhialic, god of sky and rain, who keeps far from human affairs. In myth he made the first people, Garang and Abuk, and cut the rope joining heaven to earth after Abuk disobeyed him by planting too much grain. Prayers go first to Nhialic, then to clan divinities and ancestral spirits called jok, with a bull or ox sacrificed.

Every Dinka inherits a totem from both parents; it is not worshipped but treated as kin. The Dinka largely ignored or rejected the Islam and Christianity of their neighbours, among them the Funj Sultanate that arose in 1504.