In Greek mythology, Pandora opened a jar, despite the story’s modern title, “Pandora’s box.”
The ancient Greek word used in the story is pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for grain, wine, or other goods. Hesiod’s accounts describe Pandora releasing evils from this container, not opening a small wooden box.
The “box” wording became established through later translation history. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated pithos into Latin as pyxis, meaning a small box or container. That choice helped create the familiar English expression.
The myth is preserved chiefly in Hesiod’s Works and Days, written in archaic Greece. Modern retellings often picture an ornamental box because that image fits the English title, but the vessel in the earliest surviving literary account was a jar.