In Greek mythology, Pandora originally received a jar, not a box. Hesiod uses the ancient Greek word pithos, which refers to a large storage jar or container, in his account of Pandora’s story.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed through a Renaissance translation. The humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus translated pithos into the Latin word pyxis, meaning a box or small container, helping establish the version that became standard in many modern languages.
Large pithoi were practical vessels in the ancient Mediterranean. They could store grain, oil, wine, or other goods, so the image of troubles escaping from a huge jar fits the material culture of Hesiod’s world more closely than a small modern box.
The jar-versus-box distinction is one of the most common facts people get wrong about the myth. “Pandora’s box” remains the established idiom, but “Pandora’s jar” is closer to the earliest surviving literary source.