The earliest Pandora story describes a pithos, a large ancient Greek storage jar.
Hesiod’s Works and Days uses the Greek word pithos for the container associated with Pandora. A pithos was a substantial vessel used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing commodities such as grain, wine, or oil. It was generally much larger than the small boxes shown in many modern illustrations.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through translation and retelling. The Latin writer Erasmus is often credited with popularizing the box wording in the sixteenth century, although the myth itself is much older. The modern phrase became so familiar that the original jar is often forgotten.
A pithos is not the same as an amphora. Both are ancient Greek vessels, but an amphora typically has two handles and a narrower shape, while a pithos is a large storage jar. The distinction matters because it shows how a translation helped reshape the visual identity of the myth.