In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Zeus orders Hephaestus to make Pandora from earth and water.
The passage describes Zeus commanding Hephaestus, the divine craftsman, to shape a woman’s form from earth and mix it with water. Other gods then contribute qualities or gifts, creating a figure designed as part of Zeus’s punishment for Prometheus and humanity. The account is one of the earliest surviving versions of Pandora’s creation.
This detail is sometimes simplified in modern retellings as “Pandora was made from clay.” Clay is a reasonable visual shorthand for earth mixed with water, but Hesiod’s wording specifically names earth and water rather than describing a later sculptural tradition in general terms.
The story appears in Works and Days, where Pandora’s arrival is connected to the consequences of Prometheus’s theft of fire. The myth is therefore both a creation story and an explanation for the origin of human suffering.