The golem’s remains are in an attic in Prague – although visitors are not allowed to see them

The golem of legend is a manlike being, created by human hands but lacking a soul, which eventually becomes a threat to its creators. It symbolises the dangers of technology running out of control. The golem originates in Jewish lore; the word itself means something without form, and is used to describe Adam’s body before God breathes life into him. Early texts relate it to the Sefer Yezirah (“Book of Creation”) and the Kabbalistic belief in the magical powers of letters – in this view God created the Universe by combinations of 10 numbers and 22 Hebrew letters. If the art of combination is mastered, then adepts can create anything they want – “If the righteous wished, they could create a world,” according to the Talmud.

During the 12th century, mystical Judaism developed the golem as a ritual. This involved making a form from earth or clay, and walking around it in a pattern that traced out the letters of one of the secret names of God. If this was successful, the golem was animated and became as a living being. It was deactivated by reversing the process, walking the pattern in reverse while speaking the letters in reverse order.

This creation was a symbolic and contemplative act without a physical outcome; it was a kind of end-of-term exam to prove that a certain level of understanding had been reached. This was confi rmed by Abraham Abulafi a, a 13th-century Spanish mystic, who used a 72-letter name to create the golem, each syllable corresponding to a limb or organ. He seems to have been aware that others were intent on making physical golems, and criticised those who used “the lore of the Name in order to operate thereby corporeal issues”. Interestingly, he warned that if any syllable were mispronounced it would not damage the golem but would result in harm to the creator.

The most famous golem legend tells how Rabbi Loew created one in the 16th century as a household servant and to protect the Prague ghetto from attacks. Inevitably, the golem became troublesome. According to one version, the golem had the word emet (“truth”) written on his forehead and was returned to an inanimate state when the word was erased. The remains of the golem were stored in a coffi n in the attic of the Altneuschul (the “old new synagogue”) in Prague in case it should be needed again. Apparently, the remains are still there today, although visitors are not allowed to view them.

The strongest reason to doubt this legend is that it was only attached to Rabbi Loew in the late 1700s. Before then the same story was told of Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, who had the same problems with a golem that grew larger every day. A later rabbi in Dorhiczyn in Russia is said to have used a golem to get around the prohibition on lighting fires on the Sabbath; a slight misjudgement led to the golem burning down the town.

Mary Shelley is often accused of pilfering from the golem story in her book Frankenstein. This is doubtful; in the book, Victor Frankenstein mentions that one of his influences is the great alchemist Paracelsus [see FT157:30:34], whose feats included the manufacture of a homunculus. This was an artificial human being 1ft (30cm) tall, which apparently escaped from his laboratory. The correct title of Shelley’s work is Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. Prometheus was a Titan in Greek mythology who in some versions created the first human beings, shaping their bodies from clay, so it seems there was enough literary precedent.

The golem legend took on a modern slant in 1921 with a new literary invention: the robot. They were introduced in the play R.U.R. (“Rossum’s Universal Robots”) by Karel Capek, a Czech writer who had studied philosophy in Prague. The term ‘robot’, which means approximately ‘worker’, was used to denote human-like artificial beings created to do menial labour. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the theme of the play is the robots’ revolt against their human masters.

The golem has now returned with the concept of ‘claytronics’, in which a robot is built from a number of small elements called ‘catoms’. Seth Goldstein and Todd Mowry of Intel’s research labs in Pittsburgh are working on the individual catoms that will fasten on to each other and organise themselves into a single unit. Ultimately, they hope that this technique could be used to make a human-like robot. Current catoms are marble-sized and can only operate in small numbers, which would make a rather lumpy humanoid. The idea is that with small enough individual units the claytronic being would present a smooth surface and be sufficiently human-like to walk among us. In principle, it could be moulded to imitate specific people as required.

(Naturally, the hardest part of the claytronic project will be the software that drives it. As with the original Kabbalistic notion, the slightest error in the code will prevent it from working.)

The claytronic robot recalls also the shape-shifting liquid metal robot in Terminator 2, which had also turned against humans. But in spite of all the dire warnings from folklore, fi ction and Hollywood, our machines have so far not turned against us. Although computers are – as anyone who has ever used one will know – perverse, literal-minded and awkward, they are faithful servants. The golem legend tells us more about human psychology than it does about the menace of technology.