The Greek container usually translated as Pandora’s “box” is a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world, commonly for goods such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s Works and Days uses this kind of vessel in the Pandora story. It was not a small wooden box with a hinged lid, even though that image dominates modern illustrations and everyday speech.
The modern expression developed through translation history. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus rendered the Greek vessel with a Latin term associated with a box or container, and later European languages popularized “Pandora’s box.” The translation became so influential that the altered object is now part of the myth’s standard name.
An amphora is another important ancient Greek container, but it is a narrower, two-handled vessel and is not the container identified in Hesiod’s account. The distinction matters because “pithos” preserves the story’s original agricultural and household setting.