Book excerpt: A devotee of Hat-hor'¦ 'More than forty years passed between my initial encounter with Hat-hor's name and my first devotions to the goddess. It was a long time. My first thought is that, for most of this period, I was not so much stepping to meet Hat-hor as dawdling on the way.' A religion for the modern world'¦ 'The concept of ma'at also translates readily into the field of ecology. Ecological balance is a matter of balance between species, and between those species and the environments in which they live. This clearly has a kinship with the balance between the stars, which is most certainly a matter of ma'at. Ecology is not, in itself, an ancient Egyptian concept, but the way in which it slots so readily into Kemetic ideas demonstrates how adaptable those conceptions are. It may also form another example of the ease with which Kemetic religion fits with rationalism.'