kuku and Hebrew culture

A COMPARATIVE STUDY of THE KUKU CULTURE and THE HEBREW CULTURE:
M.M.NINAN
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Sokare escarpment--this is a range of mountains that stretch north, south, and west on
the West Bank of the river, covering parts of the Bari, Madi, and Kuku territories. (Poggo,
Scopas, “personal observation”).
Generally speaking, the Kuku people crossed the Nile and entered Kajo-Keji as
invaders. They came in small waves, sometimes displacing or absorbing the previous
inhabitants of the country, the Moru-Madi group. Thus, the first Kuku invaders were the
Kinyi’ba and Kande’ba clans which displaced the Madi people, the original owners of the
land. They laid claim to the most fertile and productive land, and called themselves
monye kak (landlords), known as the people who ate their food with salt (Hodnebo, 93;
Duku, Lobunek, n.d. 1).
Meanwhile, the final wave of Kuku migrants in Kajo-Keji was that of the Kasurak clan.
This group owned cattle, and also brought with them the institution of rain-making. They
did not lay claim to any land, and were therefore not labeled as monye kak or landlords.
Their new home was established at Kikiji Hill several miles west of the Sokare
escarpment. It was from here that the rest of the rain-making clans in Kuku society
received their “rain powers” (ibid.).
The Kuku are generally comprised of more than one hundred clans whose
backgrounds can be traced to the various immigrant groups in the Kukuland
(Tomilyan, 1999, 3). The Kuku, for instance, borrowed some of the marriage rituals,
traditional dances, and songs from the Madi people along the east and west banks of the
Nile. Meanwhile, the Kuku language carries a large Bari vocabulary. The institution of
rain-making and the nature of independent chieftaincies among the Kuku people were
borrowed directly from the Bari. Each chieftaincy, headed by a rain-maker, covered a
large territory (Jale, 2002/60; Tete, 2002/55). The people in each chieftaincy carried out
their political, economic, and social activities independent of the other chieftaincies.
There were occasional raids or skirmishes between neighboring villages or chieftaincies,
which lasted for only a short time (Mulukwat, 2003/60).
In the event that the entire Kukuland was threatened by powerful foreign armies such as
the Bari, Madi, Lugbara and the Acholi (ethnic groups of Uganda), all the Kuku
chieftaincies would unite together to fight and defeat such an enemy. For example, in
ancient times, the Bari, Madi, Lugbara, and Acholi warriors invaded the Kuku homeland,
but they were defeated by the Kuku armies. These waves of invasion resulted in the
capture of prisoners of war. Thus, the names such as Gamba, Alia, Nagamba, Lonyuru,
and many others are not indigenous names—this is testament to the Lugbara-Kuku wars
(Tete, 2002/55).
Before the advent of the knowledge of iron working in the Kukuland in ancient times, the
Kuku peasants used pointed sticks fashioned from branches of a tree called payat. This
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