In Hesiod’s Pandora story, the container holding the world’s evils was originally called a jar. Hesiod used the ancient Greek word pithos, a large storage jar, rather than the word for a box.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” arose much later through translation history. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated pithos into the Latin pyxis, meaning box or small container, helping establish the expression used in English and many other languages.
The jar was not simply a household object in the story. Zeus gave Pandora a sealed vessel and forbade its opening. When it was opened, evils escaped into the world, while hope remained inside. Artistic depictions often show a small box, but the earliest literary version describes a substantial earthenware jar. This jar-versus-box distinction is the best-known textual detail about the myth.