In the Greek myth of Pandora’s box, Pandora actually opened a jar.
The earliest Greek version describes a large storage jar, called a pithos, rather than a modern box. The container held destructive forces or troubles that had previously been kept away from humanity. When Pandora opened it, these forces escaped into the world.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” comes from a later translation tradition. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus translated the Greek container as a box, helping establish the expression used in English and many other languages. The popular wording is therefore not a literal description of the earliest Greek object.
The jar detail matters because the myth’s meaning is tied to containment: suffering is imagined as something stored away and released by human curiosity. The story is usually associated with Hesiod’s Works and Days, an ancient Greek poem that presents Pandora as part of an explanation for why human life includes hardship.