Hesiod says Hephaestus used earth to shape Pandora’s body.
In Works and Days, Zeus orders Hephaestus to make a woman from earth. The material links Pandora to the wider Greek idea that humans are earth-formed or earth-born, while the divine contributions give her a crafted and supernatural identity. She is not described as being carved from metal or born from an Olympian goddess.
The passage also reinforces Hephaestus’s role as an artisan. He works with earthly material under Zeus’s command, creating a figure who will become part of the human world. The gods then add clothing, ornaments, voice, and other qualities. This sequence makes Pandora a deliberate divine construction rather than an accidental emergence.
Modern retellings sometimes call the material clay, which is a reasonable paraphrase of an earth-made figure, but Hesiod’s wording is conventionally translated as earth. “Clay” can suggest a more specific substance than the Greek text requires. The safest canonical answer to the material question is therefore earth.