In Hesiod’s *Works and Days*, the woman who opens the forbidden jar is Pandora.
Hesiod, writing in ancient Greece, presents Pandora as the first woman. The gods create her as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus steals fire. Each god gives her a quality or gift, and her name is commonly interpreted as meaning “all-gifted.”
The story appears most fully in *Works and Days*, a didactic poem traditionally dated to around the seventh century BCE. Hesiod also refers to Pandora in *Theogony*, but that earlier passage gives less narrative detail.
Modern retellings usually call the container “Pandora’s box.” Hesiod’s Greek text describes a large storage jar, or *pithos*, rather than a small box. The name Pandora therefore belongs to the woman, not to the container.