In Hesiod’s Pandora story, Hephaestus crafts Pandora’s body from earth.
Works and Days describes Zeus ordering Hephaestus, the divine smith and craftsman, to make a woman’s form from earth. The creation is part of Zeus’s punishment after Prometheus gives fire to humanity. Hephaestus’s role connects Pandora with the making of images, metalwork, and fashioned materials rather than with birth from human parents.
Other gods then contribute qualities or adornments. Athena teaches her crafts, Aphrodite gives beauty, and Hermes supplies a deceptive or deceptive-minded character in Hesiod’s presentation. The exact distribution of gifts varies across translations and later retellings, but Hephaestus’s role as maker is a stable feature of the account.
Modern versions sometimes say that Pandora was created by Zeus alone. That simplifies the sequence. In Hesiod, Zeus commands the plan, while Hephaestus physically forms the woman and other gods help prepare her for her arrival among humans.