The original Greek name of the vessel often called Pandora’s box is pithos. In Hesiod’s account, a pithos is a large earthenware storage jar, not a small wooden chest or jewelry box.
Pithoi were substantial containers used in the ancient Greek world for storing commodities such as grain, wine, and oil. Their size and practical role make the vessel in the myth more like a household or agricultural storage jar than the compact box shown in many modern illustrations.
The “box” wording became influential through a translation associated with the Renaissance scholar Erasmus. He rendered the Greek container with the Latin word pyxis, which means box. That choice entered later European retellings and produced the familiar phrase. The translation is so established that “Pandora’s box” remains standard English, even though pithos is the closer term for Hesiod’s object.