In the earliest surviving version of Pandora’s story, Pandora opened a pithos, a large Greek storage jar.
The account appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days, where the Greek noun pithos identifies the container. A pithos was generally a substantial ceramic vessel used to store commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. It was not the small hinged box pictured in many later illustrations.
The expression “Pandora’s box” developed through later translation history and artistic convention. Renaissance humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam is often associated with translating the Greek vessel as a box in a Latin version, helping establish the wording that became familiar in European languages. Modern readers therefore encounter a phrase that differs from the earliest surviving description.
The distinction matters because it changes the visual scale of the myth. Pandora’s container was imagined more like a storage jar than a hand-sized keepsake box. “Amphora,” “kylix,” and “krater” are also Greek vessel terms, but they are not the specific word used for Pandora’s container in Hesiod’s account.