[The Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, later called the Knights of Rhodes] sent this foot-high jeweled bird to [Emperor] Charles, who was then in Spain.  They sent it in a galley commanded by a member of the Order.  It never reached Spain.  A famous admiral of buccaneers took the Knight's galley and the bird.  In 1713 it turned up in Sicily.  In 1940 it appeared in Paris.  It had, by that time, acquired a coat of black enamel so that it looked like nothing more than  a fairly interesting black statuette.  In that disguise, sir, it was, you might say, kicked around Paris for more than three score years by private owners too stupid to see what it was under the skin.  Then in 1923 a Greek dealer named Charilaos Konstantinides found it in an obscure shop.  No thickness of enamel could conceal the value from his eyes. ... To hold it safe while pursuing his researches into its history, Charilaos re-enameled the bird.  Despite that precaution, I got wind of his find.

For the Aylmer is a creature of endless histories.  A living relic of civilizations long since forgotten. ... The Aylmer's origins can be traced back to the Fourth Crusade where he was snatched from the Emperor Alexius during the sack of Byzantium in 1203.  It's believed a Venetian mercenary named Matteo Grimaldi brought the creature to Europe, but he had to surrender it almost immediately to a renegade cardinal, a Borgia who wanted the Aylmer all to himself.  In 1699, the Aylmer reappeared in the possession of one Don Manuel Perolta, a Spanish viceroy and freelance corsair.  He lost the Aylmer to a Portuguese admiral off the Barbary Coast who himself was murdered within days by a young midshipman who fled with his prize to Africa.  There the Aylmer quickly fell into the hands of a Mabootoo chief whose tribe placed a deep religious value in the Aylmer's many talents.  Then, during the Second World War, a German munitions tycoon bribed a battalion commander to obtain the Aylmer for himself.  It didn't work out that way.  The Aylmer was brought to Berlin all right, but he passed from host to host for over three decades until I tracked him down.  Until I paid for him in both money and blood.  Until I made him mine.

Upon opening, in the winter of 1824, a tomb in the necropolis of Sakkara near Memphis, Arab workmen discovered a mummy, every limb of which was cased in solid gold; each finger had its particular envelope, inscribed with hieroglyphics: "So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt."  A golden scarabaeus or beetle was attached to the neck by a chain of the same metal; a signet-ring was also found, a pair of golden bracelets and other relics of value.  The excavation had been made at the charge of the Swedish Consul; but the articles discovered became the prize of the laborers.  By a liberal application of the cudgel, the scarabaeus with its chain, a fragment of the gold envelope and the bracelets were recovered.  The bracelets are now in the Leyden Museum, and bear the same name as the ring.  This signet-ring, however, which was not given up at the time, found its way to Cairo and was there purchased by the Earl of Ashburnham.  That nobleman having put his collection of relics, with his baggage, on board a brig chartered in Alexandria for Smyrna, the vessel was plundered by Greek pirates, who sold their booty in the island of Syra.  The signet in question fell thus into the hands of a Greek merchant, who kept it till about three years ago, when it was sold in Constantinople and purchased and brought finally to England.  It is again in the possession of the Earl of Ashburnham. ... A discovery of the ring ... which Pharaoh gave to Joseph appears to border on the marvellous; and, yet, such things were and gentleness of climate may allow us to suppose that they still exist, while modern energy, science and learning are so laying bare the world's sepulchre of the past that we ought not to disbelieve at the suggested resurrection of any thing.