The Scorpion God is a collection of three novellas by William Golding published in 1971. They are all set in the distant past: "The Scorpion God" in ancient Egypt, "Clonk Clonk" in pre-historic Africa, and "Envoy Extraordinary" in ancient Rome. A draft of "The Scorpion God" had been written but abandoned in 1964, "Clonk Clonk" was newly written for the book, and "Envoy Extraordinary" had been published before, in 1956. "Envoy Extraordinary" became a play called The Brass Butterfly which was performed first in Oxford and later in London and New York.

This was Golding's first publication since The Pyramid in 1967 and his last until Darkness Visible in 1979, which he started to write in 1975 after a long period of "creative hibernation", the beginning of which is described in a journal he started at the time, under the heading 'History of a Crisis'.

Critical opinion differs about whether the three novellas are bound by a common theme other than their setting in the deep past.

Leighton Hodson describes the first two as "taxing but contrasted works" characterised by "highly wrought spareness of expression" and the third as "lighter, though not included for entertainment purposes only." He says also that while the unity of theme between the three novellas is not straightforward, they can be thought of as "a sequence of meditations on human thinking", one about religion, one about man as a social animal, and one about "the potential dangers of the meddling intellect". Kevin McCarron sees the unifying theme as being instead to do with "the issue of progress": "The Scorpion God" concerns an outsider called the Liar challenging the established order of the kingdom he has entered; "Clonk Clonk", which is more optimistic about the potential value of innovation, considers an imagined prehistoric change in the relationship between men and women; and "Envoy Extraordinary" considers the perils of technological development. Don Crompton sees a connection between "The Scorpion God" and "Envoy Extraordinary" in their concern with the dangers of fixed world views but sees little other connection, saying "assiduous analysis can always be made to yield common ground between individual works, but these three stories are concerned with distinctive societies and draw independent lessons from them".

In an interview with James R. Baker in 1981, Golding himself said "if it has a unity it is one of the accidents of history" and that that wasn't something he set out to provide. He did also say in a letter to his editor that two other stories were too different from "The Scorpion God" and "Envoy Extraordinary" to include alongside them and instead wrote "Clonk Clonk" to complete the book.

Golding wrote a first draft of the novella from which the collection takes its name in 1964, under the title "To Keep Now Still", but he was unhappy with how it came out and abandoned it until early 1969 when he rediscovered it and mentioned it to his editor, Charles Monteith at Faber & Faber, with the suggestion that it could be published together with "Envoy Extraordinary". He didn't send a copy until July 1970 after several re-drafts, at which point it had its final title.

The title relates to pharaohs from around 3200–3000 BC. The character "the Liar" is intended to be the pharaoh who unified Upper and Lower Egypt and established the First Dynasty. Golding knew there was debate about whether that pharaoh, Menes, was the same person as Narmer (whose name may mean "stinging") and about whether Narmer was the same person as King Scorpion. For the purposes of the story, they are one and the same, and the dying priest saying "he stings like a scorpion" is intended to reference this.

In fierce heat, a man called Great House (the literal meaning of Pharaoh), also known as the God, is performing a ritual run that takes place every seven years, from his palace, around a low building on a rocky outcrop and back, to ensure that the river will rise and allow the fields to be planted. He is accompanied by the Liar, an attendant of his. His eleven-year-old son, known only as the Prince, is supposed to be watching with an old blind man, but is ignoring it instead. The Prince doesn't want to have to become the God, which means marrying his sister, Pretty Flower, and taking on the burdens of holding up the sky and making the river rise. He is also going blind, a fact that panics the old man when he learns it, since it puts in jeopardy his ability to carry on the duties of the God, which he will be relied upon to perform. As Great House is almost finishing the run, delirious from exhaustion, he collides with the blind man's stick and collapses, as the blind man is trying to tell him of the Prince's condition. The Prince accuses him of lying and Pretty Flower has him sent away to "the pit". The failure of Great House to complete the run is a terrible omen. When the river last failed to rise high enough, the God of that time drank poison and his retinue were expected to follow him into the afterlife – the eternal Now – a prospect they accept happily but which terrifies the Liar.