1. 4. XXVI. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR 117

is a question to be decided by experts, but we have lately seen that

certain milk-superstitions did exist in Darfur.

The second fact to which I would draw attention is as follows: Browne states that in Darfur at the beginning of the rainy season

the king accompanied by the lesser chieftains (meleks) goes out

into the fields while the people are sowing and makes several holes

with his own hand^. The same custom is said to apply in Bornu, etc.

It has its counterpart (as Browne notes) in ancient Egypt.

" The great mace-head of Hierakonpolis, dating back some six or

seven thousand years...shews his majesty inaugurating irrigation works

with a hoe of the pattern still in use.'*^ " The central figure is the king standing with a hoe in both hands.

Before him is a man holding a basket for the earth, and beyond that

there has been another man holding a bunch of ears of corn."^

The same practice used to obtain among the Fung. Bruce relates

that the name " Badi," which he considered generic to the Fung kings, meant "the peasant," and was given because of the custom whereby

the king always ploughed and sowed with his own hand a plot of

land once in his reign*.

Thirdly, when 'Amr ibn el 'Asi conquered Egypt he found and

abolished the annual rite of sacrificing a virgin to ensure the rise

of the Nile^.

That the same custom lingered in Bornu down to modern times

appears from the story which negro pilgrims told Burckhardt in 1816-1817 at Cairo: they related that "at the time of the inundation, which is regular there as in Egypt, it [s.c. the river Tsad which ' flows through Bornou at a short distance from the capital of Birney '] flows

with great impetuosity, A female slave richly dressed is on this solemn occasion thrown into the stream by order of the king^."

^ Browne, pp. 283-284. El Tunisi confirms the truth of Browne's account as regards Darfur. " Le sultan possede, en propriete speciale, des terres labourables. ...A r^poque des semailles...il sort en grande pompe, escorte de plus de cent jeunes femmes Le prince, une fois arrive en pleine campagne, descend de cheval, prend diffdrentes graines, et, k mesure qu'un esclave pioche la terre, il les jette et

les seme. C'est la premiere semence qui tombe sur le sol, dans la contree oil est

alors le sultan— " (Voy. au Darfour, p. 169.)

^ Seligman, ^^OM^K. Anth. Inst, xliii, 1913, p. 667.

' Flinders Petrie, Hierakonpolis , i, 9-10, quoted by Seligman, loc. cit. Cp, Reisner, The Egyptian Conception of Immortality (IngersoU Lecture, 191 1), § vn.

* Bruce, iv, 469 (Bk. vii, Ch. ix). According to MS. " D 7" there were six Fung kings called Badi.

* Butler, Arab Conquest..., p. 437. * Burckhardt, Nubia, App. 11, p. 489; and cp. Hornemann's Travels, p. 103.