The Egyptian records mention Lukka pirates raiding the coast of Canaan during the reign of Akhenaten — long before the period of the main Sea Peoples crisis.

The presence of Aegean-style pottery at sites in Cyprus and the Levant before the collapse period demonstrates that there were regular contacts between the Aegean world and the eastern Mediterranean that predated the upheaval.

This background of contact and mercenary service is important for several reasons.

First, it suggests that the Sea Peoples phenomenon was not the sudden appearance of completely unknown peoples but rather the intensification and transformation of existing contacts.

The people who became the Sea Peoples were not strangers to the eastern Mediterranean world; many of them had been part of it, as traders, mercenaries, and maritime workers, for generations.