Mummy of Yuya, Tutankhamun’s great-grandfather

Mummy Yuaa is the mummy of an old, white-haired man, 1 m. 651 mil in height. His hair, now dyed yellow by embaiming materials, was perfectly white at the time of his death. It is long and wavy – more than 11 centimeters long when straightened. Unlike his wife, he shows no marked tendencies towards baldness.

Its face is relatively short and elliptical, the total height of the face is only 110 millimeters, while the bizygomatic width is 135 millimeters. His nose is prominent, aquiline, and highly bridged: the alae are at the same time broad, probably more so than in life, because the nostrils have been widened in the process of packing the nostrils with cloth. The nose is 56 millimeters long and 36 millimeters wide (alar measurement). The bridge of the nose protrudes 2 centimeters in front of the canthi. Lips appear somewhat full. The orbits are elliptical and slightly spaced, with the distance between the canthi being 32 millimeters. The external diameter of the eye palm is 101 millimeters: the right orbit is 44 x 30 and the left 40 x 30 millimeters. The jaws are moderately square. The bigonial diameter is 106 millimeters. The beard and mustache were not shaved two or three days before death, as the upper lip, chin, and submental area are densely covered with white hairs 2 to 3 millimeters long, but the gum area is sparser. The eyebrows and eyelashes are preserved, but unlike the other hairs, they are dark brown in color.

The orbits were stuffed in front of the sunken eyes with small masses of linen, the eyelids were pulled down through the packing material; but no attempt was made to represent the pupils with black spots, as has become the custom in the times of the XXI. dynasty.

Unlike the ears of most New Kingdom royal mummies, Yuaa’s were not pierced. The skin of the body in general and of the face has acquired a dark reddish-brown color, but on the protuberances of the face the color is much lighter, as if these parts had been rubbed.

The skin of the forehead, like the cheeks, is wrinkled. There is little to rely on when trying to determine Yuaa’s age at the time of his death other than his general appearance, white hair and wrinkled skin. If, on these slight grounds, we estimate his age at sixty years, it must be understood that the mention of such a figure is little more than a guess.

The wrappings were so badly damaged and so fragile that it was quite impossible to determine the order or arrangement of the fragments of transverse, oblique and longitudinal bandages that remained. Between the wraps on the back and around the thighs were two distinct layers of straw, apparently placed there on purpose.

Looking at the racial markings on Yuao’s body, there is very little that we can definitively grasp as a clear indication of his parentage and affinities.