The container in the earliest Greek account is a pithos, a large storage jar, not a small box.
Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos for the vessel associated with Pandora. A pithos was a substantial ceramic container used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Its size and function differ greatly from the compact chest or box shown in many modern illustrations.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” became established through a Renaissance translation. Erasmus’s Latin version rendered the Greek vessel as a box, or pyxis, helping create the wording that later became standard in European languages.
This translation changed the visual identity of the myth without changing its central plot. Amphora, krater, and lekythos were also Greek vessel types, but none is the container named in Hesiod’s account. “Pithos” is therefore the precise archaeological and classical term.