Note 327.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)

Nor was the rule requiring the choice, or at any rate the recognition, by the harem so redolent of the comic opera as it may seem, since the women all became the wives of the new king.327.1 This is usual in Africa, and not in Africa only, but in other regions where a similar type of polygamous monarchical society exists. It is most familiar to us among the ancient Hebrews. Absalom, by taking possession of his father’s harem, made a final and unqualified assertion of his succession to the throne. Solomon evidently regarded Adonijah’s request for Abishag the Shunammite as a pretension inconsistent with his own sovereignty; for she had been part of King David’s harem, though in fact no more than his nurse.327.2 In these cases the women had probably little to say in the matter. But by the customs of the South-Eastern Bantu a man’s widows, though they are bound to the family of the deceased, are allowed some latitude in the choice of the individual man with whom they will mate. Among the Thonga, for example, at the final distribution of the estate, any of the widows who refuses to take the husband to whom she has been provisionally allotted will be permitted to exercise her own preference.328.1 The power accorded to the widowed queens of Quiteve to choose their new husband was hardly an extension of this liberty. That it drew with it incidentally the right to the kingdom was a consequence which did not affect the principle.