The animal was led by a rope in lieu of a nose ring, often the noose was fastened to the lower lip as well. The butchers tied a rope to one of its legs, passed it over the animal's back and pulled it up. Then the cow was wrestled to the ground, its legs bound together, its head pulled back and with a hand long knife the throat was cut. The blood was collected in shallow vessels.
If the animal was butchered in a temple's abattoir, a priest would be standing by, supervising and performing ritual acts, like sprinkling the contents of an elongated vessel on the wound.
The extremities and the head were cut off and the animal was skinned. The hind legs were cut into three parts: the thigh (sut), the knee-joint (iuwa) and the foot (inset). Like modern butchers, the Egyptians cut up the carcass according to the quality of the meat, ribs, rump, back etc. Among the innards, the spleen and the liver were especially esteemed. Herodotus described the ritual slaughter of cattle. After checking whether the animal is fit to be sacrificed they lead the sealed beast to the altar where they happen to be sacrificing, and then kindle a fire: after that, having poured libations of wine over the altar so that it runs down upon the victim and having called upon the god, they cut its throat, and having cut its throat they sever the head from the body. The body then of the beast they flay, but upon the head they make many imprecations first, and then they who have a market and Hellenes sojourning among them for trade, these carry it to the market-place and sell it, while they who have no Hellenes among them cast it away into the river: and this is the form of imprecations which they utter upon the heads, praying that if any evil be about to befall either themselves who are offering sacrifice or the land of Egypt in general, it may come rather upon this head. Now as regards the heads of the beasts which are sacrificed and the pouring over them of the wine, all the Egyptians have the same customs equally for all their sacrifices; and by reason of this custom none of the Egyptians eat of the head either of this or of any other kind of animal: but the manner of disembowelling the victims and of burning them is appointed among them differently for different sacrifices; I shall speak however of the sacrifices to that goddess whom they regard as the greatest of all, and to whom they celebrate the greatest feast. When they have flayed the bullock and made imprecation, they take out the whole of its lower entrails but leave in the body the upper entrails and the fat; and they sever from it the legs and the end of the loin and the shoulders and the neck: and this done, they fill the rest of the body of the animal with consecrated loaves and honey and raisins and figs and frankincense and myrrh and every other kind of spices, and having filled it with these they offer it, pouring over it great abundance of oil.
They make their sacrifice after fasting, and while the offerings are being burnt, they all beat themselves for mourning, and when they have finished beating themselves they set forth as a feast that which they left unburned of the sacrifice.
Herodotus, Histories II, Project Gutenberg
After the sacrifice they disposed of the rest of the carcass by burial or throwing it into the Nile.
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