In Hesiod’s Pandora story, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to make the first woman.
Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire, metalworking, smithing, and craftsmanship. In Works and Days, Zeus commands him to fashion a woman, beginning the divine construction of Pandora after Prometheus’s theft of fire. The passage describes the woman as shaped from earth and endowed with a human form.
Other gods then contribute qualities or adornments. Athena teaches or dresses her, while Aphrodite and Hermes add characteristics that make her attractive and persuasive. This sequence presents Pandora as a deliberately assembled divine creation rather than as a naturally born human.
Modern pictures often show Hephaestus forging a metal figure, but Hesiod’s account is a literary myth, not a technical description of a workshop process. The god’s role is important because it links Pandora to the Greek tradition of divine craftsmanship, in which Hephaestus also makes weapons, armor, jewelry, and other extraordinary objects.