In the earliest Greek version of Pandora’s myth, she opened a jar rather than a box.
Hesiod’s Works and Days uses the Greek word pithos, which normally means a large storage jar. Such jars were used in the ancient Mediterranean for commodities including grain, oil, and wine. The container in Hesiod’s poem therefore belongs to a familiar household and agricultural context, not to a specially designed little chest.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later. Renaissance humanists helped popularize the box image after the Greek term was translated into Latin as pyxis, a small box or container. The mistranslation became much more influential than the original description and eventually shaped paintings, books, films, and everyday speech.
The jar-versus-box distinction is one of the myth’s most common details to get wrong. Both versions refer to the same story: after the container is opened, evils spread into the world, while one final element remains inside.