White Nile tribes interpreted the Egyptian expedition through their own religious frameworks.

Evidence

The people of the Kik began to worship them, heralding them as messengers sent by the gods. Selim Qapudan sent his translator, a converted Dinka soldier named Muhammad, to explain to them that the expedition came by order of Allah to punish rebellious tribes and protect obedient ones. In response to Muhammad’s message, the Kik left a number of cows; the expedition gave glass trinkets to a delegation of Kik elders. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 201

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the reader’s theme that colonial encounters were mutual misreadings shaped by each side’s cosmology; echoes the Kik worshipping the expedition as gods.
• QUESTION: Why did the converted Dinka soldier frame the mission theologically as punishing rebels and protecting the obedient what model of power did a former Sudanese slave-soldier bring?
• CANDY: The Kik worshipping Nile explorers as divine messengers and leaving cows as tribute is a vivid, standalone anecdote.