In Greek mythology, Pandora’s original container was a jar, not a box.
The Greek poet Hesiod described Pandora opening a large storage jar, using the Greek word pithos. A pithos was a substantial ceramic container used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Its practical shape was very different from the small hinged box imagined in modern retellings.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” arose through a later translation tradition. In the sixteenth century, the humanist Erasmus rendered pithos as the Latin pyxis, meaning a small box or container. That choice helped establish the expression used in English and many other languages.
The change in container is one of the best-known differences between the ancient myth and its later popular form. The central idea remains that opening the vessel releases harmful forces into the human world, while one final presence remains inside.