Irving Finkel is Assistant Keeper in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum in London, where he is the curator of the collection of cuneiform clay tablets. He is the best-selling author of The Ark Before Noah, which documents the newly translated tablet of the Babylonian story of the flood which was recorded on clay tablets long before it was written down in the Hebrew Bible, proving it to be one of the world's most ancient and lasting stories. It is that tablet that has given rise to the story in this book.