<p>With songs and the drumbeats of a military band, Egypt on Sunday welcomed home the mummy of what is believed to be a legendary pharaoh, 150 years after it was looted from its tomb.</p><p>The Michael Carlos Museum at Atlantas Emory University turned over the 3,000-year-old mummy on Friday. Museum curators say the small, shriveled figure is Ramses I, who ruled Egypt from 1292-1290 B.C.</p><p>We are the sons of the Nile. Welcome Ramses, the builder of esteemed Egypt, sang a chorus of Egyptian schoolchildren gathered around a box draped in the Egyptian flag in the entrance hall of the Egyptian Museum. A military band played national music outside.</p><p>Zahi Hawas, head of Egypts Supreme Council of Antiquities, praised the handover as a great, civilized gesture, though he said the mummys identity was not certain.</p><p>We are not 100 percent sure that the mummy is that of Ramses I, but we are 100 percent sure that it is of a king, Hawas said.</p><p>Other experts, including Emily Teeter, curator of Egyptian antiquities at the University of Chicagos Oriental Institute, have said there is no hard evidence that the returned mummy belongs to Ramses. In the absence of a DNA match, scholars have relied on historical, archaeological and other scientific evidence to identify the mummy.</p><p>Many cite the position of the mummys arms: crossed high over his chest in a fashion reserved for royal mummies at the time of Ramses death. Some say he bears an undeniable resemblance, especially in the face, to two of his descendants whose mummies have been identified _ Seti I and Ramses II.</p><p>But Hawass ruled out the possibility of DNA tests, calling them unreliable. Egyptian antiquity officials have always rejected DNA tests on mummies of pharaohs, possibly fearing the tests could challenge established theories.</p><p>Hawass said the mummy will be displayed next year at the Luxor Museum in southern Egypt.</p><p>He appealed to other world museums to return Egypts antiquities and masterpieces, particularly the bust of Nefertiti _ in the Berlin Museum _ and the Rosetta Stone _ in the British Museum.</p><p>The so-called Ramses mummy was the centerpiece of a large Egyptian collection the Emory museum purchased in 1999 from the Niagara Falls Museum in Ontario, Canada.</p><p>The Ontario museum likely received the mummy from a Canadian doctor who had the artifacts smuggled out of Egypt in the early 1860s, about the time tomb raiders discovered a cache of royal mummies near the Valley of the Kings. It was from that cache that the remains of Ramses I disappeared.</p><p>Ramses I, ancestor of Egypts most illustrious rulers, ruled for only two years. He founded the 19th Dynasty, becoming the first of eleven rulers named Ramses, including his grandson, Ramses II.</p><p>Egypt is plagued by antiquity smuggling, a flourishing business that officials estimate at some US$1 billion annually. Hawasss council is pressing for the maximum sentence for smuggling to be increased from five to 25 years.</p><p>Earlier this month the prosecutor general committed to trial a former top executive of Egypts ruling party and 30 others on charges of smuggling no fewer than 300 antiquities, graft and money laundering. Other officials and police officers were arrested on similar charges.</p>
