In the Pandora myth, Pandora opened a jar, not a box.
The earliest surviving Greek account appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed around the 7th century BCE. Hesiod uses the word pithos, which generally means a large storage jar used for commodities such as grain, wine, or oil. The later Latin tradition and subsequent translations helped turn this vessel into a box in popular culture.
The change from jar to box is often associated with Renaissance scholarship and the translation history of the myth. The Latin word pyxis, meaning a small box, was used in a version of the story and influenced the familiar English phrase “Pandora’s box.”
This difference matters because the modern image of a little hinged box is not the form described in the oldest Greek text. In the myth, opening the container releases evils or troubles into the human world. Hope is the final thing left inside, although ancient interpreters debated exactly what that means.