In Hesiod’s Greek myth, which deity fashioned Pandora’s body from earth?

In Hesiod’s Greek myth, Hephaestus fashioned Pandora’s body from earth. Hephaestus was the Olympian god associated with fire, metalworking, craftsmanship, and the forge.

The creation scene appears in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days. Zeus commands Hephaestus to make a woman, and the craftsman god shapes her from earth. The other gods then contribute gifts or qualities, which explains her name, Pandora, meaning “all-gifted.”

This part of the story is easy to mix up because several gods participate in Pandora’s preparation. Athena is associated with teaching her crafts and dressing her, while Aphrodite gives beauty and Hermes supplies qualities connected with speech and character. Hephaestus’s specific role is the initial physical fashioning.

The myth presents Pandora as a constructed figure rather than a woman born through an ordinary human family. Hesiod places her creation within Zeus’s response to Prometheus and the theft of fire, making the episode part of a wider divine punishment narrative.