Iraq, 2004. The war on terror rages on and as lawlessness escalates in Iraq, looters are hitting the museums. Mina Osman, a spirited young American archaeologist of Iraqi descent appalled at the loss of her parents' heritage, heads to the University of Mosul to help source Iraq's antiquities.

While reprimanding one of her students for conspiring with the looters, a cuneiform tablet dating back three thousand years is handed over for restitution. The tablet holds within it a profound secret about the primordial flood described in the Gilgamesh epic.

What begins as a straightforward translation of an ancient text triggers a series of disruptive and life-threatening events. A chase without limits ensues which takes the savvy and adventurous Mina and Jack, a handsome ex-US Army Major, from Mosul to Safed and from Cambridge to Phuket, in the midst of the tsunami cataclysm.

Alex Mitchell is an honorary researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University. Alex is working on two sequels to The Thirteenth Tablet which will take Mina Osman to China, India, and Greece, with a climax in North America.