The First Woman Of the Mortal World - Greek Mythology

Pandora - She was the first mortal woman on earth according to Greek Mythology. Daughter of Hephaestus, the God of Fire, Pandora was blessed by other deities with extraordinary gifts. But it is often believed that she was a woman crafted by the gods to bring suffering on earth.

How? You’ve heard of Pandora’s Box right?

Pandora’s box is a widely used metaphoric phrase which refers to something that once done, generates many problems and complications. Where did this phrase come from?

Zeus - The king of Gods gave the task of creating all living things and the natural world to two brothers - Prometheus and Epimetheus. Prometheus made the first of men from clay and Epimetheus created all other living beings.  According to the legend, after the creation of mankind, Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to the human race. Zeus was livid and angered by this theft and ordered the god of fire Hephaestus to create the first mortal woman to punish Prometheus and the human race.

And so came Pandora, a beautiful woman blessed into being by the Olympian Gods. She was divine in every sense of the word. Athena taught her the fine crafts, Aphrodite gave her grace and the gift of deep emotion and Hermes gave her her name. In the end Zeus bestowed two gifts onto her, one was the trait of blazing curiosity and second was the box which he instructed her to never open. As its contents were not for the mortal eyes. She was gifted along with the box to Epimetheus who, irresistible to her divinity, married her against his brother’s advice 

In the mortal world, Pandora explored life on earth with excitement, she was known to be impatient, given her intriguing nature and desire to question and know everything. And as she grew older her curious mind wandered towards the box she had and could not open. What were its contents? Why weren’t they for the mortal eyes and why was it given to her? She swore she often heard voices coming out of it, calling her. In the end its enigma became unbearable to her and she fulfilled her destiny by opening the box. With the lid of the box lifting open, Pandora unknowingly unleashed all ill and evil into the world. These terrible things included disease, despair, war, strife, vice, cruelty and the necessity to work for sustenance. She felt a sense of foreboding as the evil forces flowed away, out in the world while she desperately tried to draw them back inside the box, into their prison. But it could not be undone. 

“ Her blazing curiosity set a chain of earth shattering events in motion.”

As Pandora sat devastated she saw a flicker of light in the box flowing out. It soothed the burying guilt she felt for her actions, calming the air around and easing her anguish. It was hope, which flickered out last from the box and swirled into the world so that humanity might somehow bear its sudden and eternal misfortune, a single blessing from Zeus to ease mankind’s suffering.

Through this punishment, Zeus thus compensated for the theft of fire and restored the eternal division between gods and humans. 

Today Pandora’s story and her box are used to represent the extreme and irreversible consequences of tampering with the unknown and sometimes begs the question, that -  Are there some things better left unknown?