So In feet of clay, is there a reason sir terry pratchett chose to use golems as opposed to another mythical automaton? For example, the kratt is another Eastern European option. Why a golem specifically?
First of all, the kratt is an Estonian story, not Eastern European. Estonia is in Northern Europe, near Finland. Golems are from Jewish mythology, and not Eastern European.
It's obviously hard to speak for Terry, given that he's dead and we never really chatted about Golems vs kratts specifically, but I would hazard a guess that the reason that Terry wrote a book called Feet of Clay about Golems is because he wanted to, and got to explore Jewish/Yiddish myth in his own way, and the power of the written word, not to mention do some Yiddish jokes, and so the Golem lore allowed him to tell his story in a fashion that say kratt [who aren't made of clay, thus losing the book's punning title, but from household objects, and are brought to life by giving the Devil three drops of blood and not by writing things and/or placing writing in or on their heads, thus losing more of the book's themes, and who have to keep working and need to be given impossible tasks to destroy them] wouldn't have. Also, most people have heard of golems, but I had to stop and check kratt, and I couldn't name any other mystical automatons that would work in a Discworld setting that would have given Terry that plot.
