Pastoralism, possibly along with social stratification, and Pastoral rock art, emerged in the Central Sahara between 5200 BCE and 4800 BCE. Funerary monuments and sites, within possible territories that had chiefdoms, developed in the Saharan region of Niger between 4700 BCE and 4200 BCE. Cattle funerary sites developed in Nabta Playa (6450 BP/5400 cal BCE), Adrar Bous (6350 BP), in Chin Tafidet, and in Tuduf (2400 cal BCE – 2000 cal BCE). Thus, by this time, cattle religion (e.g., myths, rituals) and cultural distinctions between genders (e.g., men associated with bulls, violence, hunting, and dogs as well as burials at monumental funerary sites; women associated with cows, birth, nursing, and possibly the afterlife) had developed. Preceded by assumed earlier sites in the Eastern Sahara, tumuli with megalithic monuments developed as early as 4700 BCE in the Saharan region of Niger. These megalithic monuments in the Saharan region of Niger and the Eastern Sahara may have served as antecedents for the mastabas and pyramids of ancient Egypt. During Predynastic Egypt, tumuli were present at various locations (e.g., Naqada, Helwan). Between 7500 BP and 7400 BP, amid the Late Pastoral Neolithic, religious ceremony and ceremonial burials, with megaliths, may have served as a cultural precedent for the latter religious reverence of the goddess Hathor during the dynastic period of ancient Egypt.
