Pandora’s famous container was originally a jar in the ancient Greek story.
Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos, meaning a large storage jar or vessel. Such jars were used in the ancient Mediterranean to store goods including grain, oil, and wine. The original myth therefore did not describe a small wooden box in the modern sense.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through a translation tradition. In the sixteenth century, the humanist Erasmus rendered the Greek container using the Latin word pyxis, which can mean a box. That wording became influential in European languages and eventually fixed the familiar English expression.
The container’s material and size are less important to the myth than its sealed contents. Once opened, it released the troubles that had previously been kept away from human life. The English title remains widely used even though “Pandora’s jar” is closer to Hesiod’s wording.