Genesis 31:47

Jacob called it Galeed. Both names, one Aramaic and the other Hebrew, have practically the same meaning, a “heap of witness.” That the earliest known non-Biblical Aramaic inscriptions do not reach back to the time of Jacob, but date from a later period, does not prove the nonexistence of Aramaic in the 17th century B.C. The earliest non-Biblical evidence for the existence of such a language consists of certain Aramaic words found in the alphabetic cuneiform tablets of ancient Ugarit in Syria, dating from the 15th century B.C. Our Bible, therefore, contains the earliest attested Aramaic words known. Each of the two men gave to this memorial a name in his own language, the two being identical in meaning. Inasmuch as the region later became a possession of Israel, the Hebrew name Gilead (Galeed) was applied to it. This includes not only the vicinity of Mt. Gilead itself but all of the mountainous uplands east of the Jordan between the Yarmuk and Jabbok rivers.