In Hesiod’s Pandora myth, the famous container is described by the Greek word pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in ancient Greece and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Such vessels could hold grain, oil, wine, or other supplies. Hesiod’s Works and Days uses the word pithos for the container associated with Pandora, rather than the ordinary word for a small household box.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed because the Greek term was translated into Latin as pyxis, a box or container. Renaissance and later European retellings helped establish the box image in popular culture. The original jar image is important because it reflects the practical storage vessels known in the ancient world.
A pithos was usually much larger than the decorated jars commonly seen in museum displays. The myth does not require the container to be a modern hinged box, and translations differ in how they render the object. This distinction explains why “Pandora’s jar” is also used by classicists.