Are you referring to this picture?
What you think are "pupils" are not. They are either coins or potsherds placed on the closed eyes to keep the eyelids closed. Archaeological excavations have confirmed this tradition. Skeletons from the first and second century C.E. have been found with a coin in each eye-socket in Jewish cemetaries at Jericho and at En Boqeq. Enhancement of the microphotographs of the right eye on the Shroud seems to show the outline, a liitus staff, and some Greek letters of a Lepton minted around AD 30-31 by Pontius Pilate.
AN ANOMALY THAT DOES NOT DECEIVE
Confirmed by three-dimensional analysis (figure 31), the discovery was found to be definitively corroborated by its very fruitfulness, for it led to some unexpected progress in numismatic science. Four Greek letters, Y CAI, are in fact all that are needed to reconstruct the inscription TIBEPIO [Y KAI] CAPOC, "of Tiberius Caesar". But there is an anomaly: on the Holy Shroud a Latin C replaces the initial Greek K of KAICAPOC, which figures on all the coin collections known up to 1980 (see figure 32).
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Figure 31: Confirmation of the three-dimensional analysis. The letters Y CAI are clearly visible at the top left, as well as the staff and even the outline of the coin. |
 Figure 32: above, a coin of Pontius Pilate with the staff surmounted by the letters CAICAPOC, with a Latin 'C' instead of the Greek 'K'.Below: the imprint superimposed on a coin of Pontius Pilate shows that the letters Y CAI form the visible part on the Holy Shroud of the Greek inscription: TIBEPIO [Y CAI] CAPOC, "of Tiberius Caesar", with the same anomaly: 'C' instead of 'K'. |
Though the lepta (plural of lepton) minted in Palestine were Roman produced coins, the inscription of Tiberius Caesar would have been written in Greek as TIBERIOY KAICAPOC. Was the C, where a K was expected, a misspelling? This was a problem that seemed to preclude positive identification until an actual Lituus lepton was found with the aberrant spelling. Several have since been found. This anomaly seems to give credence to the coins identification.
(Other spelling errata on Leptons of the area and era include TIBERIOU KAISAROS, TIBERIOY KAICAPOC and TIBERIOY KICAROC.)
One argument I, Swordmaker, advanced against the coins on the eyes was the fact that the Shroud image presented the coin letters in the order Y CAI when, being a mirror image, I expected them to be IAC Y (reversed as a reflection) however, it turns out that many leptons, being produced by JEWISH workers, were made with the words in the reverse order, replicating the right to left nature of Hebrew writing. These are called Retrograde Leptons and evidently the one on the right eye of the Shroud image may be of that nature.
It should be noted that Barrie Schwortz, an expert photographer and principal light photographer for STURP, is of the opinion that the Shroud image does not have the resolution to reproduce identifiable coins. He thinks that while they may indeed be coins, they could just as easily be potsherds. On the other hand, many researchers using various enhancement techniques have come to the conclusion that there are indeed Roman (Palestinian) 1st Century coins on the eyes of the image on the Shroud. IKf the Shroud is genuine, I cannot conceive of Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, using potsherds, usually associated with the burial of poor people, to fulfill the tradition of placing something on the eyes to keep them closed. He would have used coins from his purse.
In any case, your assumption of "pupils" is mistaken.