In Greek mythology, what was Pandora’s jar said to contain before it was opened?

In Greek mythology, Pandora’s jar was said to contain the world’s evils before it was opened.

Hesiod’s Works and Days describes the release of destructive conditions that had previously been kept away from human life. Later retellings often list these as diseases, toil, sorrow, and other forms of suffering. The myth explains, in symbolic form, why hardship exists even though the gods created or ordered the human world.

The story is not simply about physical evils escaping from a container. It also concerns the relationship between divine power and human limitation. Pandora is made by the gods, while Zeus controls the punishment connected with Prometheus’s theft of fire. The jar functions as the mechanism through which the new condition of human life is established.

Modern versions often say that “all the evils” escaped, leaving only hope behind. Hesiod’s wording and the later history of the myth are more complicated than that popular summary, but the jar’s broad contents are conventionally described as the world’s evils.