A small extragalactic meteorite found by an ancient Egyptian peasant becomes an object of worship, mystery and intrigue as it passes through all of human history. Transformed into an amulet, it was worn by many including pharaohs and peasants, a roman general, charlatans and a physicist. Its path leads through an inquisition, a plague, to a slave ship an oil field and centuries into the future. Both cherished and reviled, its unusual symmetry attracts the powerful to the commoner yielding understanding or effecting chaos. Whether the stone has the power to gather the essence of the living, whether it is a connection to the unknowable or whether its beauty simply stimulates the human imagination to mellifluence or malevolence, those are questions for scientists and philosophers. But one thing is certain ... it is not what it seems. This, the first of three volumes, takes you from the origin of the amulet to an Egyptian pharaoh and a general of imperial Rome.