Irving Finkel is the senior curator responsible for the cuneiform tablet collection in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. He is a specialist in medical and magical works in Akkadian and particularly interested in esoteric inscriptions that concern ancient thought and speculation. St John Simpson is also a senior curator in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum where he is responsible for the collections from Iran, Central Asia and Arabia. He specialises in the archaeology of the Sasanian and early medieval periods and has excavated extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia.