In Greek mythology, Pandora opened a storage jar, not a modern box.
The earliest surviving versions of the story use the ancient Greek word pithos, meaning a large storage jar. Such jars were used for commodities including grain, oil, and wine. The familiar “box” comes from a later translation tradition: the Renaissance humanist Erasmus rendered pithos with the Latin pyxis, a small box or casket, helping establish the expression Pandora’s box.
This detail matters because the story’s original imagery is domestic and agricultural rather than a magical wooden chest. Pandora is told not to open the container, but curiosity leads her to do so. Troubles escape into the world, while hope remains inside or is otherwise retained, depending on the interpretation of the text.
The jar is commonly confused with an ornate box because that image dominates modern paintings, books, films, and idioms. In ancient Greek art, however, no single canonical design for the container is established.