Pandora
There are many ways in which the figure of Pandora can be interpreted. Erwin Panofsky wrote a monography on the subject. According to M. L. West, the story of Pandora and the jar is older than Hesiod's versions. This also explains the confusion and problems of Hesiod's version and that it is inconclusive. According to West, Pandoora was married to Prometheus in these versions. West cites Hesiod's Catalogue of Women, which preserved the older version. In one version of the story, the jar may have contained only good things for mankind. West also writes that it may have been that Epimetheus and Pandora and their roles were transposed in the pre-Hesiodic myths. This is called a "mythic inversion". He remarks that there is a curious correlation between Pandora being made out of earth in Hesiod's story, to what is in Apollodorus that Prometheus created man from water and earth. Hesiod's myth of Pandora's jar, then, could be an summary of many different early myths.