The northern boundary between Canaanitish and Aramaic dialects was among the mountains of Gilead. This is made clear by the narrative of the covenant between Laban and Jacob. At Mizpah, the ‘Watch-tower,’ which guarded the approaches to the south, a cairn was raised, called Yegar-sahadutha in the language of Laban, Galeed in that of Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 47, 48). The two names alike signified the ‘heap of witnesses,’ but while the first was Aramaic, the second was Canaanitish. The fact that the names survived into later history shows that the line of demarcation between the two Semitic languages which they represent continued to remain in the same place.[47] Jacob, despite his long residence in Aram and his relationship to an Aramæan family, is nevertheless Canaanite in his language. It is a sign and proof how completely the ancestors of the Israelites had identified themselves with the country which their descendants were afterwards to possess. The Canaanitish history of Israel begins long before the days of Moses or Joshua; it already dates from the day when the Babylonian Abram became the Abraham of Canaan, and when the field of Machpelah was sold to him by the children of Heth. It is true that Jacob—or it may be, Terah—is once called in the Old Testament (Deut. xxvi. 5) ‘a wandering Aramæan.’ But he was so only in a secondary sense. It was not as an Aramæan, but as a wanderer out of Aramaic lands, that the title is given him. Israel was closely connected with Aram and Harran, but it was a relationship only.