In Greek mythology, Pandora opened a pithos, a large storage jar.
The earliest surviving literary account, in Hesiod’s Works and Days, does not describe a small box. It uses the Greek word pithos, which referred to a substantial earthenware container used for storing products such as grain, oil, or wine. The vessel was therefore closer to a large jar than to a hinged box.
The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” developed through later translation and retelling. The Latin writer Erasmus used the phrase pyxis, meaning box, in a sixteenth-century version of the story, helping establish the wording that became standard in European languages.
The distinction matters because the original object carries a different visual scale and function. A pithos was a practical household or agricultural storage vessel, not necessarily a specially decorated magical box. The modern phrase remains the best-known form of the myth’s title.