There is much in the way of confusion when it comes to identifiers and datapoints regarding the cultural histories between the differing Mediterranean seafaring peoples, particularly during their great migrations into Asia Minor. Often, aggressive acts of piracy that plagued Egypt were mistaken as Minoan (Crete) in nature instead of Mycenaean. It was commonplace for Egypt to mistake newly established Greek settlements for Philistine settlements, Philistine settlements for Semitic settlements, and so forth.
This situation has thusly created a puzzle box of sorts for contemporary historians to decipher the most likely of tribes in certain situations and events whilst sifting through the occasional erroneous accounts scattered throughout ancient Egyptian record. The most poignant example is to simply look again between the two ethnically separate Greek nations of the time, the Minoans and the Mycenaeans.
Egypt referenced the term "Northerners" many times and it has been widely interpreted to indicate the Mycenaean-Greeks despite Crete, populated and ruled by the Minoan-Greeks, being geographically another northward contender for the recurring reference.
If "Northerners" refers to the Mycenaean-Greeks then "Keftians" refers to the Minoan-Greek population that dwelled on Crete. Therefore, the Mycenaean-Greeks had the ability of travel-by-sea and the Minoan-Greeks, despite the height of their civilization's peak established during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt's decline, did not. This is not to say that a Minoan or two never departed their isle to the mainland coast of the Levant, but mass migration during this civilization's epoch at the scale of their northwestward neighbors (the Mycenaeans) is widely ruled out as unlikely.
Prior to the rise of Mediterranean piracy, the Minoan civilization had begun to deteriorate (by 15th century BC) marking this newer nautical enemy of the Egyptians as intrinsically Mycenaean-Greek via process of elimination. The "Peoples of the Sea" were never Minoan in nature, did not wear their garb, and it is evidenced that the Minoans actually engaged in fierce skirmishes against them, thwarting invasions from the waters against the very same enemy that would later engulf Egypt's coasts and the adjacent coastlines of Libya and Phoenicia.
An existential threat to the Empire of the Nile saw the Egyptians lump many differing foreign cultures into the same group, when in fact there were various contrasting tribes who encompassed the invading migrants who first encroached upon their waters and would later infiltrate into her region. It has since been the duty of scholars studying this period to attempt to ascertain the correct correlation and identifications in this steep game of "Who's Who?" ever since.
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