In Hesiod’s Theogony, Pandora is shaped from earth.
The Greek creation account presents Hephaestus as making Pandora from earth after Zeus orders him to create a woman. The material links her to a fashioned or crafted figure and reinforces the image of divine manufacture at the beginning of human misfortune.
The gods then decorate and endow her with different qualities. This is why descriptions of Pandora can sound like both a creation story and a piece of divine craftsmanship. Hesiod does not describe her as emerging from a jar or as being made from precious metal.
A later visual tradition often depicts Pandora with a vessel, which can blur the separate details of her creation and her arrival among humans. In the earliest literary account, the vessel and the woman are distinct parts of the narrative.