Sacred bull
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Cattle are prominent in some religions and mythologies. As such, numerous peoples throughout the world have at one point in time honored bulls as sacred. In the Sumerian religion, Marduk is the "bull of Utu". In Hinduism, Shiva's steed is Nandi, the Bull. The sacred bull survives in the constellation Taurus. The bull, whether lunar as in Mesopotamia or solar as in India, is the subject of various other cultural and religious incarnations as well as modern mentions in New Age cultures.
The Procession of the Bull Apis by Frederick Arthur Bridgman, oil on canvas, 1879
20,000-year-old cave paintings in Lascaux, France
Human-headed winged bulls from Sargon II's palace in Dur-Sharrukin, modern Khorsabad (Louvre)
Stele dedicated to an Apis, dating to Year 21 of Psamtik I (c. 644 BCE)
Ra
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Ra or Re was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, order, kings and the sky.
Ra on the solar barque on his daily voyage across the sky (𓇯), adorned with the sun-disk
Jewelry of Ra as a falcon with spread wings, adorned with the sun-disk and holding the ankh, the hieroglyphic symbol of life
Inlay depicting the squatting Ra with the sun-disk placed atop his falcon head
Ra in his ram-headed form traveling through the underworld in his solar barque on the subterrestrial Nile, from the copy of the Book of Gates in the tomb of Ramses I (KV16)