Everyone knows that piracy was not by men like Blackbeard and ‘Black Bart’ Roberts. It has been around since man first took to the sea, a maritime that appeared in historical records since before the building of the Egyptian pyramids. The Mediterranean, known as the ‘ of civilization’, was also a pirate hot-spot, which we know because the Ancient Egyptians the time to describe the attacks and their perpetrators.
As in any period, piracy in the ancient world flourished when there was a lack of central control, and in areas beyond the of major powers such as the Egyptians, the Assyrians or the Mycenaean Greeks. The first known pirate group was the Lukkans, a group of sea raiders based on the south-eastern coast of Asia Minor. They first appeared in the 14th century BC, when Egyptian recorded that they raided Cyprus, there are suggestions that their piratical activities started earlier.