Structure

Golem · Artificial Creature — A being made from inanimate materials

An artificial creature of the Jewish mystical Kabbalistic tradition, built from clay, stone, or metal and brought to motion by sacred letters or formulae. The Hebrew word golem first appears in Psalm 139:16, where it names an unformed substance; the earliest direct technical account is in the Kabbalistic Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation, c. 200-500 CE), and the twelfth-century German Hasidei Ashkenaz pietist Eleazar of Worms wrote the first detailed creation ritual in his Hilkhot Yetzirah. The most famous case is the Golem of Prague, attributed to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague (1525-1609, known as the Maharal), who is said to have built a clay servant from the banks of the Vltava to defend his persecuted Jewish community; the legend was given its modern canonical form by Yudl Rosenberg's 1909 pseudepigraphic Niflaos Maharal. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Gustav Meyrink's Der Golem (Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1915), Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Aventinum, 1921) which coined the word 'robot', and the four-type Dungeons & Dragons golem (Clay, Stone, Iron, Flesh; TSR, 1977) are all direct descendants of the same template.

Gargoyle · Stone Monster — Legendary Protectors of Medieval Architecture

The Gargoyle (French gargouille) is a grotesquely carved stone waterspout fixed to the exterior of Gothic cathedrals and churches between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The name derives from French gargouille, itself from Latin gurgulio ('throat' or 'gullet'), the same root that yields English gurgle. Its function is severely practical: a channel is bored through the body so that rainwater channelled along the roof spouts through the creature's mouth and is thrown clear of the wall, sparing the masonry from erosion. At the same time, the monstrous, demonic, or chimerical form was meant to ward off evil. The most famous gargoyles are those of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris (begun 1163, completed 1345), many of which were redesigned during Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's restoration of 1843-1864. Victor Hugo's 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris brought them into popular Romantic imagination. Stone figures without a water-spout function are, strictly, chimeras or grotesques, not gargoyles.