Pandora and Eve share a fair amount of characteristics. In Christian Mythology, Eve was the first woman to be created by God, her creation beginning when God took a rib from Adam and used it to grow Eve. Pandora, on the other hand, was the first human woman to be created by the gods, her body shaped out of earth and her curiosity meant as a punishment to mankind for Prometheus stealing the secret of fire from the gods.

Eve is commonly known as the wife of Adam in Christian and Islam mythologies. She is accepted as the first woman ever to be created and the wife of Adam, the first man to ever be created. Eve’s story is not a flattering one; she was put into the Garden of Eden to live out her days eating from the trees and other plants with Adam, never to worry about anything. However, there was one tree from which she and Adam were never to pluck the fruit; that tree was the Tree of Knowledge. Of course, it made her incredibly curious as to why this particular tree was forbidden; was the fruit poisonous, she wondered, or perhaps bad-tasting?

At first, Eve was able to resist eating from the Tree of Knowledge. She listened to what she was told a little too well, however, as she was convinced by a serpent to partake in the fruit. She found it to be incredibly delicious and convinced Adam to try it. The fruit imparted in them the knowledge that they were naked, and it made it so that they had understandings of things that otherwise only God would have had understandings of.

Pandora, however, did not exactly discover knowledge of something that she wasn’t supposed to. Instead, she came in possession of a jar (some accounts refer to the receptacle as a box) and was told not to open it under any circumstances. However, as with Eve, curiosity got the best of Pandora and she opened the jar, unleashing upon the world all potential evils and types of suffering. However, in the very bottom of that jar was a tiny thread of one more element; hope.

While Pandora and Eve are quite similar, there are some significant differences in their stories. Pandora was not the one who affronted the gods; Prometheus’ theft of fire angered them, and so Pandora was sent down as a punishment. When she opened the jar and unleashed evil into the world, she doomed them forever to suffering. Eve, however, was the one who affronted God by directly disobeying His orders; when she misbehaved, God cursed her and declared that because of her humanity would have to know suffering. Pandora’s cursing (for lack of a better word) humanity was really not her own doing; Eve’s, however, mostly was.