In Greek mythology, Hephaestus crafted Pandora, the first woman, from clay.
Hesiod’s account presents Pandora as a creation commissioned by Zeus after Prometheus gave fire to humanity. Hephaestus, the divine smith, shaped her from earth or clay, while other gods supplied her with distinctive gifts and abilities. Her name means “all-gifted” or “all-giving,” reflecting this assembled divine design.
Pandora is often shown as a single-god creation in modern summaries, but the myth describes a collaborative process. Athena taught her crafts, Aphrodite gave her grace and desire, and Hermes supplied deceptive speech and a deceptive nature. Hephaestus’s role was specifically the physical making of her form.
The story appears most fully in Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony. Later retellings commonly call her container a box, although the earliest Greek version describes a large storage jar.