Pandora’s container was originally a jar, called a pithos in Greek accounts. Hesiod describes Pandora receiving a large storage vessel, but later translations and retellings transformed that vessel into the familiar “box.”
The pithos was a substantial ceramic container used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Its ordinary household form made the myth’s image especially vivid: a vessel containing forces that would permanently change human life.
The “box” wording became established partly through a sixteenth-century Latin translation associated with Erasmus. A mistranslation or adaptation of the Greek term helped create the expression now used in English. The jar-versus-box distinction is one of the best-known differences between the ancient story and its modern popular form.