Cattle people of the great swamp of the Bahr al-Jabal and Bahr al-Ghazal and the plains west of it, where the Nuer and the Atuot have their old homeland (round later Bentiu and Leer) before the Nuer move east of the Nile in the nineteenth century.
The Nuer and Dinka languages split long before; who exactly lived here in 1200 is not known.
Who holds it
- Title
- Spear-masters (priestly clan heads) and cattle-camp leaders
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
How things stand that morning
Self-governing; no overlord.
Customs
Leopard-skin priests and prophets among the later Nuer; cattle camps; age-sets.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Placed by the later Nuer homeland and the language history.
On the map: The swamp itself shrinks and grows each year; the outline is generous.
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia: Dinka people (after S. Beswick, Sudan's Blood Memory, 2004, on Gezira origins and the Damadim)
- Wikipedia: Luo peoples (the Nilotic core region, the southern Luo leaving the Bahr el Ghazal about eight hundred years ago, Nyikango in the fifteenth century)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.