In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the first woman in Greek mythology is named Pandora.
Hesiod presents Pandora as a creation of the gods and connects her arrival with humanity’s punishment. Zeus orders Hephaestus to shape her from earth, while other gods give her different gifts. Her name is commonly interpreted as meaning “all-gifted” or “all-giving,” although the exact Greek interpretation is debated.
The story appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony, two poems composed in archaic Greece, usually dated to around the eighth or seventh century BCE. Hesiod’s account is the earliest surviving literary version of the Pandora myth.
Modern retellings often call Pandora’s container a box, but Hesiod describes a large storage jar, or pithos. The later “box” wording became standard through Renaissance translation and artistic tradition.