The IOS Annual volume 23: “Drought Will Drive You Even Toward Your Foe” brings forth studies devoted to a wide array fields and disciplines of the Middle East. The two sections – Ancient Near East and Semitics include six articles. The Ancient Near East contains three articles dealing with the history of Mesopotamia and ancient Syria (Steinkeller; Steinmayer; Cohen), and the second and concluding part of “On Aramaic Loanwords in Neo- and Late Babylonian Texts” (Zadok), which appeared in IOS 21. The Semitic section includes two articles. The first is about metaphors in the Bedouins' Poetry (Cerqueglini). The second is a study of the vocalization of guttural consonants in the Secunda (Maurizio)