In Greek mythology, Pandora’s original container was more accurately a jar.
Hesiod uses the ancient Greek word pithos, which generally means a large storage jar. Such vessels were used in the ancient Mediterranean to hold materials including grain, oil, or wine. The myth therefore originally involved Pandora opening a substantial earthenware container rather than a small wooden box.
The “box” version became famous through Renaissance and later European translations. The influential humanist Erasmus used the Latin phrase pyxis Pandorae, meaning Pandora’s box, and that wording spread widely in Western culture. It became so familiar that “Pandora’s box” is now the normal English expression.
The translation change matters because the jar belongs to the material world of ancient Greece, while the box is largely a later literary and artistic convention. Both versions refer to the same myth, but “jar” is the more precise answer for Hesiod’s original object.