An excavation team said it had uncovered artifacts which indicate that an ancient Bronze-Age kingdom in northern Syria had strong international trade relations with Nile river dynasties. Peter Pfalzner, head of a joint German-Syrian archeology team, said that gifts (including a gold and lapis bracelet, a sheet of gold with a depiction of a palm tree, a small crystal jar, and a stone statue of a hippopotamus of Egyptian origin) originating from the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia were discovered in burial chambers at the ruins of a once royal city near what is now the Syrian city of Aleppo.