Every purpose, therefore, was answered, and
all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and transferring his
soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous successor.
The mystic kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia are not allowed to
die a natural death. Hence when one of them is seriously ill and the
elders think that he cannot recover, they stab him to death. The
people of Congo believed, as we have seen, that if their pontiff the
Chitom? were to die a natural death, the world would perish, and the
earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell ill and seemed
likely to die, the man who was destined to be his successor entered
the pontiff's house with a rope or a club and strangled or clubbed
him to death. The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were worshipped as gods;
but whenever the priests chose, they sent a messenger to the king,
ordering him to die, and alleging an oracle of the gods as their
authority for the command. This command the kings always obeyed down
to the reign of Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II.
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