In Hesiod’s creation story, Pandora is fashioned from clay. Hephaestus, acting on Zeus’s instructions, shapes her body from earth before the other gods add their gifts and abilities. This detail links Pandora to ancient creation traditions in which a divine craftsman forms human beings from earthly material.
Hesiod’s account appears in Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece and generally dated to the seventh century BCE. Pandora is created as part of Zeus’s response to Prometheus’s theft of fire. The gods make her outwardly attractive and give her qualities that help make the gift persuasive, but the story presents her arrival as a punishment for humanity.
Later artistic and literary versions sometimes depict Pandora as being born, emerging from a jar, or appearing fully formed among the gods. Those images do not match Hesiod’s specific creation sequence. In the earliest surviving account, she is made by Hephaestus from earth and then prepared by a group of deities before being sent to Epimetheus.