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. "The Scorpion God" 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. Plot 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