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Many know of the "evil eye" as a ward against disaster and injury. However, the lesser known evil to the human eye were the sandy dunes of the desert. These particles lead to significant eye problems for ancient Egyptians.

The Papyrus Ebers is the artifact chosen. This document, written in hieroglyphs, reveals that these ancient Egyptians were aware of diseases like cataracts/glaucoma, inflammations, trachoma and more ¹. It was created during the Ancient Egyptian times and survived long past, to be rediscovered in the 19th Century by Geoge Ebers.

It is important because it illustrates how eye disease was an ailment that had treatments, and it is the earliest medical document describing these modalities.

Source:
(1) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1600-0420.1997.tb00792.x
(2)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ebers-papyrus

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Early Alexandrian understanding of the Eye  

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Early Alexandrian understanding of the Eye  

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Rufus from Ephesus was a man whose life is shrouded in mystery, however he made significant contributions to the way people understand the eye today.  Rufus' major contribution came from his conceptualization of four layers to the eye, two of which were two chambers filled with fluid². This work could not have been possible without his dissections, and understanding of anatomy. Galen learnt from Rufus' works, although he rarely attributes credit to them¹.
Although little is known about Rufus' location, it is estimated that he wrote  the bulk of his texts during 100 A.D in Alexandria where he studied¹.
The artifact "OEUVRES de Rufus d'Ephèse" is a collection of manuscripts that Rufus wrote from which Galen likely studied his works 1. This is particularly important because it is an artifact that represents how Galen build his foundation of knowledge from the works of Alexandrian physicians who were able to dissect. Although many of the manuscripts of others survived, it is important to understand the context and attribute credit to these people.

Sources:
(1) https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv9b2w2k.9
(2)
https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/eyespages/eye.html
(3)
http://www.mrcophth.com/Historyofophthalmology/anatomy.htm

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The artifact is a recovered manuscript from a fourteenth century MARC. GR. 276. The manuscript lists the text as Galen's work, and scholars debate if it is authentic as a part of his original collection. Galen wrote the majority of his works in the early 160s (CE) in his home city of Pergamon2

Building off of the work of Alexandrian physicians and texts, Galen came to a great understanding of the eye. In his book de libris propriis, Galen references that he wrote a text about the eye and gave it to a young eye doctor. Medieval Islamic scholars have referenced this lost text, although the original copy was lost to history1

Galen's advancements on the eye were important because he created the definitions of important structures for the eye. His conceptualization of the eye survived him well into the 17th century². Without his contributions, Islamic scholars could not have furthered their ophthalmological advances.

Source:
(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4430809/
(2)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galen/

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Medieval Islamic Achievements in Ophthalmology 

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Medieval Islamic Achievements in Ophthalmology 

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The artifact is a depiction of the eye from "The book of the Ten Treatises on the eye." This is significant because the emphasis on opthalmology in Islamic society lead to ophthalmological surgical advances and societal understanding.

This book was written in 809-877 A.D by Hunain Ibn-Is-Haq in Cairo and it is the earliest systematic text book on ophthalmology.

After Galen hypothesized that external light provided information to the eye for sight to occur, Islamic scholars became interested in the treatment of the eye¹ They became interested to such an extent that the study of the eye became a revered profession.

One of the people who wrote literature on the eye was Ammar Ibn Ali al-Mawsili at around year 1000 in Egypt. In his work he detailed the "hollow glass syringe" that he used to suck cataracts off of the eye.

Source:
(1) https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/eyespages/eye.html
(2) https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xxrzwgrq
(3)
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-abstract/608041
(4)
https://www.aspetar.com/journal/viewarticle.aspx?id=385#.YFk5pi-z1N0

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Johann Gottfried Zinn was known as the father of modern ocular anatomy for good reason. While Galen made major contributions to our understanding of the anatomical descriptions of the eye, he did so with only the work of animal dissections.
Dr. Zinn's interest in flowers as a botanist and anatomist is particularly ironic due to his work on the "iris" of the eye.   Zinn was able to talk about the ciliary body, blood vessels in the optic nerve, and further developments on the histology of the Eye¹. He did so in 1765 in his book, and the artifact,  the OCVILI HVMANI in Germany. In his short life of 32 years he was able to build on the backs of Galen, Vesalius and the other forefathers of anatomy of the body and for that reason he would be the most well equipped.

Source
(1) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1755-3768.2009.01679.x

(2)
https://archive.org/details/descriptioanatom00zinn

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Salvino D'armate was said to create eyeglasses in 1286 although Alessandro Della Spina is often accredited with the invention.

The artifact is the first depiction of Salvino's rivet glasses, created by Tomasso da Modena in 1352 in Venice¹
It is notable because it is early renaissance art and it emphasizes the use of glasses for both intellectual and artistic pursuits. While glasses were known, they were typically only used by the rich and this was a way to popularize them²

Source
(1) https://www.college-optometrists.org/the-college/museum/online-exhibitions/virtual-spectacles-gallery/the-invention-of-spectacles.html

(2)
https://www.bygonely.com/bg_item/spectacles-1286-by-salvino-darmate/