Unkulunkulu is represented as ’the First Man, who broke off in the beginning.’  ‘They are ancestor-worshippers,’ says Dr. Callaway, ’and believe that their first ancestor, the First Man, was the Creator.’[35] But they may, like many other peoples, have had a different original tradition, and have altered it, just because they are now such fervent ancestor-worshippers.  Unkulunkulu was prior to Death, which came among men in the usual mythical way.[36] Whether Unkulunkulu still exists, is rather a moot question:  Dr. Callaway thinks that he does not.[37] If not, he is an exception to the rule in Australia, Andaman, among the Bushmen, the Fuegians, and savages in general, who are less advanced in culture than the Zulus.  The idea, then, of a Maker of things who has ceased to exist occurs, if at all, not in a relatively primitive, but in a relatively late religion.  On the analogy of pottery, agriculture, the use of iron, villages, hereditary kings, and so on, the notion of a dead Maker is late, not early.  It occurs where men have iron, cattle, agriculture, kings, houses, a disciplined army, not where men have none of these things.  The Zulu godless ancestor-worship, then, by parity of reasoning, is, like their material culture, not an early but a late development.  The Zulus ’hear of a King which is above’—­’the heavenly King.’[38] ’We did not hear of him first from white men....  But he is not like Unkulunkulu, who, we say, made all things.’

Here may be dimly descried the ideas of a God, and a subordinate demiurge.  ‘The King is above, Unkulunkulu is beneath.’  The King above punishes sin, striking the sinner by lightning.  Nor do the Zulus know how they have sinned.  ‘There remained only that word about the heaven,’ ‘which,’ says Dr. Callaway, ’implies that there might have been other words which are now lost.’  There is great confusion of thought.  Unkulunkulu made the heaven, where the unknown King reigns, a hard task for a First Man.[39]

’In process of time we have come to worship the Amadhlozi (spirits) only, because we know not what to say about Unkulunkulu.’[40] ’It is on that account, then, that we seek out for ourselves the Amadhlozi (spirits), that we may not always be thinking about Unkulunkulu.’

All this attests a faint lingering shadow of a belief too ethereal, too remote, for a practical conquering race, which prefers intelligible serviceable ghosts, with a special regard for their own families.

Ukoto, a very old Zulu, said:  ’When we were children it was said “The Lord is in heaven.” ...  They used to point to the Lord on high; we did not hear his name.’  Unkulunkulu was understood, by this patriarch, to refer to immediate ancestors, whose mimes and genealogies he gave.[41] ’We heard it said that the Creator of the world was the Lord who is above; people used always, when I was growing up, to point towards heaven.’