In Hesiod’s Greek myth, Pandora’s container was originally a jar.
The Greek word used in Hesiod’s account is pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Pandora opens it and releases the evils, diseases, and hardships that then spread among humanity. The surviving account appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through translation history. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated the Greek container as a Latin pyxis, meaning a box or small container, helping establish the wording used in European languages. Modern retellings therefore often show Pandora opening a box, even though the earliest written version describes a jar.
This detail is a frequent source of confusion, because “Pandora’s box” is now the standard idiom. The older mythological object and the modern phrase refer to the same episode but use different container traditions.