How a six-tonne Olmec head made its way from Mexico to Louvre Abu Dhabi

Shipping of 3,000-year-old stone structure was a giant challenge and a long haul

The Colossal Head now on display in the Louvre Abu Dhabi lobby earns the adjective in its name with stout aplomb.

The ancient sculpture, on loan from the Museum of Anthropology in Xalapa, Mexico, is carved out of a large block of basalt and weighs almost six tonnes – or 5,840kg, to be exact.

Designated as Colossal Head No 5, the artefact is one of 17 similar heads that have been unearthed in the past century along the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico. The sculptures were crafted by the Olmecs, the earliest-known civilisation of the Mesoamerican region. The Olmecs lived between 1600 BC and around 350 AD and had a profound influence on subsequent cultures in the region, including the Mayas.

The heads offer as many clues to the ancient Olmec civilisation as they prompt mysteries. The sculptures cannot be precisely dated, but as some of them are estimated to have been buried about 900 BC, they are believed to be at least 3,000 years old.

Each Olmec head also sports unique facial features and insignia, suggesting they were based on real people. Researchers, however, are uncertain whether they were carved in tribute to priests, rulers or political leaders. Nevertheless, it is widely inferred that the sculptures were created in honour of high-ranking individuals.

“We suppose that they were portraits of rulers,” says Guilhem Andre, Louvre Abu Dhabi’s acting director for scientific, curatorial and collections management. “We are not completely sure, because they don’t come with written sources.”

Examining Colossal Head No 5, it is easy to see why regal connotations have been applied to the sculptures. The head features a stern and resolute facial expression. Its helmet is carved with animal figures, possibly eagles and jaguars, which were martial and authoritative symbols in Olmec culture.

“The jaguar and eagle are the totemic animals from southern and Central America,” Andre says. “This is typical for the Olmec heads. They all have these sorts of helmets.”

The arrival of Colossal Head No 5 at Louvre Abu Dhabi is also the first time that the ancient artefact has been in the Middle East, according to Manuel Rabate, director of Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The loan became a reality following discussions with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which oversees the network of museums in the country. “Thanks to this great relationship, thanks to the exchanges between the teams, we were able to secure this incredible loan,” Rabate says. The museum director adds that while Colossal Head No 5 is on loan for a year, its tenure at Louvre Abu Dhabi may extend further.

Colossal Head No 5 is now the heaviest piece at Louvre Abu Dhabi, deposing the diorite sculpture of Rameses II for the title. Rabate says it was “a logistical complexity and challenge for the team” to bring the sculpture to the museum. There were a few surprises along the way, one of which was the sculpture’s weight in itself.

“For a year and a half, we thought it was 4.2 tonnes,” says Amira Al Awadhi, an assistant registrar at Louvre Abu Dhabi, who was a member of the team overseeing the head’s logistics. The team had taken measures to ensure the museum’s floor and display platform would be able to handle the sculpture at that weight, but then, just a week before the head was due to arrive, they learnt that they had another two tonnes to contend with.

“The company that does all the logistics and all the handling had to order a bigger gantry, something that could handle the weight of the sculpture,” Al Awadhi said.

The head was carefully padded and put in a crate at the Museum of Anthropology of Xalapa before beginning its 14-hour journey to Abu Dhabi on a chartered cargo flight, stopping at Hamburg on the way. Once it arrived at Louvre Abu Dhabi, it was left in the crate over the weekend to acclimatise.

“When we have a crate coming from a different country, we don’t immediately open it,” Al Awadhi said. “We have to let it acclimatise for two days so the inside temperature and humidity match the outside. So the head spent the two-day acclimation period in the conservation building. We couldn’t take it to the storage room because it was so big.”

Transporting the crate the few hundred metres from the conservation building to the museum’s lobby was no straightforward task either. The move was an all-day affair, involving a special forklift, a heavy-duty trolley, as well as a dozen people. Even after the head was unboxed, a gantry system was utilised to tilt and lift the sculpture to its display platform.

Colossal Head No 5 is not the only recent loan from a Mexican institution. Louvre Abu Dhabi has received four other artefacts as part of its agreement with INAH.

These include two Teotihuacan pieces, an incense burner and an anthropomorphic mask, both of which are dated to between 100 BC and 800 AD. The loans also include a ceremonial mask and a sculpture from Chichen Itza, both from Mayan culture and dating to between 600 BC and 1521 AD.

Rabate says the loans were carefully selected as to present the breadth of civilisations that thrived in Mesoamerican history. “They were very generous with us,” he says of the institutions in Mexico.

“In terms of diversity for our display, this is great having the Mexican pieces here with us,” Andre adds. “Mexican pieces and central Southern American pieces are not easy to reach for museums currently, and this was a great opportunity to have them here through these collaborations.”