did not produce many. Pliny's "diamonds" from Macedonia, Arabia and Cyprus were almost certainly nothing of the kind.
Students
of the Scriptures will be thinking of the High Priest's breastplate
(about which I had dreamed such a daring dream as a child). For
diamonds are mentioned as having been one of the twelve precious stones
with which it was set: the third stone in the second row, to be
precise. And "diamond" is certainly the correct translation of the
Hebrew "yahalum". But at that remote time there was no known
method of engraving on diamond, and even today, with all the modern
tools and methods at the disposal of the craftsman, the task is a most
difficult one; yet upon the "diamond" in the breastplate was engraved
the name of one of the Hebrew tribes. That alone shows that the
scriptural "diamond" was not a diamond, unless you insist that many an
art known to the ancients has had to be rediscovered in a later age
which thinks itself more advanced.
All
diamonds are extremely hard, but all diamonds are not of equal
hardness. Those that come from Borneo, for instance, are somewhat
harder than those found in Brazil or South Africa. The Australian
diamond, too, is harder than the South African product. I remember
well, many years ago, an Antwerp diamond cutter's perplexity when
having purchased a small parcel of rough diamonds he and his men found
they could make no headway with them. Why? Because the powdered
diamond, the boart, they were using in the process of cutting and polishing, was of South African origin, whereas that parcel of rough stones
