Already in book 1 of the Iliad, Achilles and Agamemnon argue over booty gathered while raiding and sacking cities. The sacking of cities for booty was not unusual during the Late Bronze Age; according to the Iliad, to be called a "Sacker of Cities" was evidently an honor (Tritsch 1974, 233-39; M. Wood 1986, 159-61). The Odyssey records the numerous adventures, wanderings, and sackings of cities throughout the Near East (including raids on Egypt) by Odysseus, as well as by other survivors of the Trojan War. If Troy VI was the city of Priam and Hector and the wanderings of Odysseus followed, then the destruction of Troy VI around 1250 B.C. would have happened just prior to the raids on Egypt against Pharaoh Merneptah. The Peoples of the Sea continued to sack cities.

However, there is a difference in the raiding and sacking at the end of the Bronze Age, circa 1200 B.C. About this time Israel was moving into the Promised Land in the hill country of Canaan, and large numbers of families from the Aegean were also on the move to their promised lands. Whereas earlier groups of men from the Sea Peoples had traveled as mercenaries for the Hittites or the Egyptians, at the end of the Bronze Age Sea People men were moving with their household goods and entire families. They were raiding not only for booty, but to establish new settlements. It was not just Troy VIIA, the squatter city that followed Troy VI, that was destroyed by the Sea Peoples; a number of major population centers throughout Mycenaean Greece were devastated (Bright 1981, 115; Desborough 1964, 217-57; Stiebing 1980, 8; Vermeule 1972, 269-74; M. Wood 1986, 222-23). Knossos, on Crete, was sacked at some point during the thirteenth century B.C., but then the pace of destruction increased, and by the end of thirteenth or early twelfth century Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns, and numerous other cities had been destroyed. The Hittite and Egyptian empires collapsed; that this was due solely to the Sea Peoples is doubtful, but both empires were definitely weakened by them. The Sea Peoples' path of destruction can be traced along the southern coast of Anatolia to Cyprus, to Syria, and then down the coast of Canaan to Egypt.

So by the beginning of the twelfth century, Troy and many Mycenaean city-states had been destroyed, and the survivors had moved on. From Troy, we will pick up the story of the Sea Peoples on Cyprus, for Cyprus apparently became a staging area for further moves of these people east and south and eventually into the Bible stories of Joshua, the judges, and others.