The Greek storage jar later known as Pandora’s “box” was called a pithos.
A pithos was a large ceramic storage vessel used in ancient Greece and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. These jars could hold agricultural goods, including grain, oil, or wine, and were often much larger than ordinary household pottery. In Hesiod’s account, Pandora opens this kind of vessel, not a small hinged box.
The modern expression arose through later translation. Erasmus rendered the container with a Latin word associated with a box, and that wording became influential in European retellings. The phrase is now so familiar that “Pandora’s box” often replaces the more historically precise description.
An amphora was another ancient Greek vessel, usually recognizable by its two handles and narrower shape, but it is not the object named in the relevant Hesiod passage. The distinction matters because the vessel’s size and function are part of the original story’s imagery.