A new Egyptian king has been found

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A.� An old one actually. A mummy left to gather dust in a Canadian corset factory that became a museum has now been identified by scientists as the long-lost remains of King Rameses I.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� Who was ...

A.� Founder of Egypt's famous 19th dynasty

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Q.� Tell me about his life.

A.� Rameses was born in the Nile delta about 1350 BC. He was son of a local troop commander, not of the blood royal. But when the childless pharaoh Horemheb fell mortally ill, Rameses was the logical man to succeed him. He ruled for only a year, but during that time he decorated the temple complex at Karnak, reopened the lost turquoise mines in the Sinai desert and took on Egypt's arch-enemies, the Hittites, in a series of bloody campaigns.

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He was an important figure in the development of the ancient world, Egyptologists say. Catharine Roehrig, Egyptian curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, said Rameses I brought stability to the region, and his family were probably the great kings mentioned in the Bible in the stories of Moses.

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Q.� And his death

A.� He was probably buried among the tombs at Dier el-Bahri, in Egypt's Valley of Kings. His mummy is among nine that were acquired by a Canadian doctor and smuggled out of Egypt in the early 1860s.

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Q.� What happened to them

A.� They ended up at the Niagara Falls Daredevil Museum and were bought by the Michael C Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, for �1.5m two years ago after a public appeal for�funds.�

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Q.� And why do the experts think it's Rameses

A.� X-rays of the mummies showed that one bore a striking resemblance to the family of the 19th dynasty. The mummy thought to be Rameses was about 5ft 5in tall, balding and had the large fleshy nose known as the 'Ra hook-nose' that runs through the 150 years that his family ruled Egypt. His arms are crossed and his toes separated by gold plates, a ceremony reserved for royalty.

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Q.� So will he stay in Atlanta

A.� Unlikely. Egypt claims any antiquity that was taken illegally. One Egyptian diplomat said: 'If this is Rameses I, then he is the greatest pharaoh not on his native soil and we would want both him and the other mummies back in Cairo.' The businessmen from Georgia who raised the money to buy him for Atlanta will want to hang on to this great king.

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By Steve Cunningham