From the Chronicle we gather that in the original composition this passage was not cast in the form of a consecutive narrative. It is a poetical summary of Sargon's might, elaborating in greater detail the preceding phrase that "he poured out his glory over the world." In it the clauses are balanced in antithesis, and the Western Land and the Eastern Sea, that is Syria and the Persian Gulf, are mentioned together as having formed the extreme limits of Sargon's empire. On the Omen-tablet the original text has been cut up into sections and applied piecemeal to different augural phenomena. In its new setting as a consecutive narrative of events the mention of the Persian Gulf was obviously inconsistent with the conquest of Amurru, and hence it was natural for a copyist to amend the text to the form in which it has reached us on the Omen-tablet.[54] The Omens still retained the reference to the despoiling of the Country of the Sea, _i.e._ the littoral of the Persian Gulf, which Shar-Gani-sharri doubtless included within the southern border of his empire. With this record we may connect the tradition, reproduced in the Legend of Sargon, that he conquered Dilmun, an island in the Persian Gulf, and with his maritime enterprise in this region we may compare that of Sennacherib at a later date who crossed the Gulf in the course of his conquest of Elam. From the earliest periods we know that the rivers and canals of Babylonia were navigated,[55] and the Persian Gulf was a natural outlet for the trade of the Sumerian cities in the south. In organizing a naval expedition for the conquest of the coast and the islands, Shar-Gani-sharri would have had native ships and sailors at his disposal, whose knowledge of the Gulf had been acquired in the course of their regular coastal trading.