Role in Egypt
They were important to the Ancient Egyptians who put them out to pasture on land that was unfarmable, either because it was too far from the Nile to irrigate or in the Nile delta (and thus too wet to farm). The Egyptians used them for food, milk, leather, and sacrifice.
Ancient Egyptian cattle came to be considered so important that many Egyptian gods were considered to have the form of cattle, notable deities being Hathor, Ptah (as the Apis Bull), Menthu (as the Bukha bull), and Atum-Ra (as the Mnevis Bull). Many were mummified.
During the New Kingdom the Zebu, hump-backed cattle from Syria were introduced to Egypt and the earlier form seems to have slowly been replaced by these new cattle.
Read more about this topic: Ancient Egyptian Cattle
Famous quotes containing the words role in, role and/or egypt:
“Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 26:8.