Artificial Eye in Burnt City and Theoretical Understanding of How Vision Works

The archeology team of the Burnt City, supervised by Dr. Seyed Mansour Seyed Sejjadi, made a significant discovery in 2007. In this excavation, they discovered world's oldest artificial eye that belonged to a woman of 28-32 years (1) (Fig. 1-A). The artificial eye, discovered in an ancient grave, was in the left eye socket of the woman. The archeology team estimated the age of the eye between 2900 and 2800 BC. This artificial eye should be considered as the first ocular prosthesis in the medical history. At first, it seems that designing the eye was associated with aesthetic aspects. In other words, it can be considered as an ocular prosthesis for further beautifying the be-holder who was probably a rich, high socioeconomic class woman. The following reasons confirm the hypothesis. First, the artificial eye was discovered in its supposed place, i.e. the woman's left eye. It can be said that the (artificial) eye was considered as a body organ of the owner, compensating for her deficiency (absence of the left eye). Second, the design of the eye was a copy of the anatomy to keep its natural appearance: 1. Like a natural eye, it has a convex surface and spherical feature (the artificial eye is hemispheri-cal); 2. The eye has a smaller circle in the center that actually is the corneal; 3. There are white spots on the conjunctiva that is likely to be a copy of a natural purely white eye; 4. It was found that there were golden wires inside the eye designed as fine capillaries which shows the familiarity of the designers with ocular anatomy (Fig. 1-B) (1). However, there are more points about this artificial eye implying that beyond aesthetic aspects, designing the eye indicates the presence of thought on the significance and state of vision. This artificial eye possesses characteristics beyond just an imitation. There are lines on this eye that cannot be seen in a natural eye and the most important ones are eight regular radial lines drawn from the center of the smaller circle (corneal) (Fig. 1-B) (1). What do the regular radiuses, reminding us of sunrays, indicate? The interpretation of the radiuses, particularly because they are institutional-ized in an artificial eye, is the very similarity with sunrays. It seems that the artificial eye is not complete without the radiuses and there would not be an eye unless there is light and brightness. …