שָׁמִיר

The word "שָׁמִיר" (shamir) appears in the Bible in several places, for example in Jeremiah (17:1): "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, with a point of shamir," where the word seems to describe a particularly hard substance used for engraving. According to rabbinical literature, the shamir was used to cut the stones of the breastplate and to hew the stones of the Temple, since according to belief these stones were not supposed to be cut with iron tools. In the Gemara (Gittin 86b), the shamir is described as a creature the size of a barley grain that was created during the six days of creation, and that was so strong that nothing could withstand it. According to other sources, it was a kind of worm that was capable of engraving in stone. Due to the context of a particularly hard substance, capable of engraving in stone, and in light of the fact that today it is known that only diamond is hard enough to engrave in other gemstones, in 1891 Dr. Ludwig Karpeles wrote an article in the newspaper "HaTzfira" in which he claimed that the mysterious "shamir" is actually the diamond. Following him, several writers used "shamir" as a Hebrew substitute for "diamond." However, eventually, in the 20th century, the use of "yahalom" prevailed over "shamir" (as well as over "shoham" and "bedolach") as the Hebrew term for diamond.