The iconic image of an Egyptian pharaoh “smiting” a “wretched Asiatic” stands as a well-known trope that illustrates idealized Egyptian perspectives regarding “others” and, by extension, the regions they inhabit. These traditional descriptions and presentation then further suggest the existence of hard, fixed, borders and equally clearly delineated boundaries between the two regions, together with stringent Egyptian oversight regarding who and what crossed them. Yet, just as the reality of the stereotypical “other” can be shown to have differed from its idealized presentation, so too did that of the nexuses between regions. This paper examines the evidence from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and the contemporary southern Levant Intermediate Bronze Age – Middle Bronze Age I that presents the formal idealized view of borders and boundaries and compares it with the data that suggests the existence of more flexible reality of permeable and changeable boundaries.