In Greek mythology, the woman Zeus sent to humanity as punishment for Prometheus’s theft of fire was Pandora.
Pandora is the first woman in the Greek myth preserved most fully by the poet Hesiod. Zeus ordered the gods to create her after Prometheus gave fire to humans, an act Zeus treated as a serious challenge to divine authority. Different gods contributed gifts to Pandora, and her name is commonly explained as meaning “all-gifted” or “all-giving.”
Hesiod presents Pandora as part of a divine punishment rather than as a simple human ancestor in the later biblical sense. She was associated with Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, despite Prometheus’s warning that gifts from Zeus might be dangerous. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” is a later expression; the earliest Greek account describes a storage vessel or jar.
Pandora is often confused with Eve because both figures appear in traditions about the arrival of suffering, but they belong to different mythological systems. Pandora’s story is specifically connected with Zeus, Prometheus, and the jar’s escaping contents.