The ox as a symbol is cattle as the basis of settled agriculture, and once that is said the pattern of the traditions becomes obvious. A society whose ploughing, transport, milk, hide and manure come from one animal will treat that animal as close to sacred whether or not it says so.
Egypt. The Apis bull of Memphis was a living animal, selected by specific markings, kept in the temple precinct, consulted as an oracle, and on its death mummified and interred in the Serapeum at Saqqara, a subterranean complex of enormous granite sarcophagi. The bull was regarded as a manifestation of Ptah and later associated with Osiris. Hathor, one of the great goddesses, is cow-headed or cow-horned.
Mesopotamia and the Levant. The bull is the standard image of divine strength. The lamassu, the human-headed winged bull, guards Assyrian palace gates. The bull is the animal of the storm gods, of Adad and of Baal, and the golden calf of Exodus 32 makes sense as an attempt to depict a god in the ordinary regional manner rather than as an arbitrary lapse.
India. Nandi is Shiva's bull and his gatekeeper, and a recumbent Nandi faces the shrine in every substantial Shiva temple, positioned so that the worshipper looks between his horns. The status of cattle in Hindu practice is genuinely complex and its history is contested, Vedic texts describe cattle sacrifice, and the emergence of strong protection norms is a later development connected with ahimsa, with Jain and Buddhist influence, and in the modern period with politics.
Greece and Rome. The bull is the principal large sacrificial animal, and the taurobolium of the cult of Cybele and the bull-slaying of Mithras are central rites.