Pandora opens the sealed vessel in the Greek myth later known as Pandora’s Box.
In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora is presented as the first woman and is sent to Epimetheus after the gods create her. She receives a large storage jar, called a pithos in the Greek text. The story does not originally call it a box.
Pandora is instructed, or at least expected, not to open the container. Curiosity leads her to remove the lid, releasing the troubles that afflict humanity. She closes it again before the final occupant escapes.
Modern retellings often describe Pandora as simply disobedient, but Hesiod’s account is part of a wider explanation of why human life contains suffering. The myth also connects Pandora’s arrival with Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus steals fire.