To understand egypts relationship to outsiders you have to understand that Egyptians viewed Egypt as the kingdom of ma'aat (order, justice, how things were supposed to be) and non-Egypt as the kingdom of isfet (chaos, injustice, misrule, to do evil). With some exceptions everything outside the nile valley was chaos and unfamiliar, with the rivers being unreliable, the rulers strange and capricious and the people violent and given to chaos&misrule.

So much of egypts relations with abroad was the ritual conquest of chaos, with each pharaoh warring (or raiding under less militarily&economicly prosperous pharaohs) to establish dominance and take tribute. This changed somewhat over the millenia (with for example medjay mercenaries becoming the norm in the new kingdom era as internal security troops, to the point that medjay became the egyptian word for police), but in general egypt was suspicious of non-egyptians who hadn't established their role in the egyptian order.