Why is Akhenaten considered an alien king of ancient Egypt?

Akhenaten (“He Who Serves the Aten” or “Effective Spirit of Aten”) is one of the most famous pharaohs of ancient Egypt, despite the attempts of later rulers to remove him from the king lists. Nearly 200 miles south of Cairo, in the heart of central Egypt, the Amarna archaeological site lies in a large desert bay next to the Nile River. To the uninformed eye, this semicircle of barren land, bounded by the eastern bank of the river and enormous limestone cliffs, looks like nothing special: a vast, stricken dust bowl, about seven miles long and…