In the earliest Greek accounts, Pandora’s famous container was a jar.
The story appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days, written in ancient Greek. Hesiod used the word pithos, which refers to a large storage jar, rather than a small box. Pandora opened this container, releasing troubles into the human world while hope remained inside.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed much later through translation and artistic tradition. The Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the Greek vessel into the Latin term pyxis, meaning a box or small container. That wording helped establish the expression used in English today.
The original jar was a substantial household storage vessel, not necessarily a special magical box. This detail matters because “Pandora’s jar” is closer to Hesiod’s wording, while “Pandora’s box” is the later conventional name. Interpretations also differ over whether hope stayed inside deliberately or was the final thing left in the vessel.