The wild bull was a symbol of virility, strength, and authority.
Sites in the Fayum and the Western Desert provide evidence for the domestication of cattle, sheep, and goats from as early as 4800 BC. Hundreds of petroglyphs of the Naqada I-II era (c.3800-3500 BC) feature the hunting and herding of horned animals, and faunal remains from Hierakonpolis reveal that the meat of wild game was a popular addition to the diet of the elite. The cattle most commonly appearing in rock-art have long, lyre-shaped, forward-pointing horns suggesting they were bred from animals such as the wild aurochs.
Throughout Egyptian history, long-horned cattle appeared in formalised agricultural scenes in tombs and on funerary papyri, but the depictions of the herds which symbolised the wealth of a nobleman’s estate suggest that short-horned cattle became more common from the Fifth Dynasty, possibly the result of interbreeding with introductions from Syria–Palestine.
