Solomon's shamir

In the Gemara, the shamir (Hebrew: שָׁמִיר‎ šāmīr) is a worm or a substance that had the power to cut through or disintegrate stone, iron and diamond.

[2] Referenced throughout the Talmud and midrashim, the Shamir was reputed to have existed in the time of Moses as one of the ten wonders created on the eve of the first Shabbat just before God finished creation.

This is supported by contemporary scholars who believe that the Shamir was emery, a blue-green stone mined as an abrasive powder for thousands of years.

The word emery comes from Koinē Greek: σμύρις, romanized: smúris, which likely shares the same root as the Semitic shamir.

[10] The Quran mentions a creature thought to be the Shamir,[11] when pointing out the ignorance of the jinn who worked for Solomon concerning the occult, and emphasizing that all knowledge rests only with God: And when We decreed death for him, nothing showed his death to them save a creeping creature of the earth which gnawed away his staff.

And when he fell, the jinn saw clearly how, if they had known the Unseen, they would not have continued in despised toil.Saba' 34:14[12]According to commentators such as ibn Abbas, when Solomon died his body remained leaning on his staff for a long time, nearly a year, until "a creature of the earth, which was a kind of worm," gnawed through the stick weakening it and the body fell to the ground.