In a press statement, Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the newly discovered settlement is 1km long from north to south and 250m wide from east to west. The Secretary General added that archaeological evidence at the site indicates that the settlement inhabitants were part of an administrative centre – and engaged in baking on a massive scale.

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.