The original container in Hesiod’s Pandora story was a pithos, a large Greek storage jar.
Hesiod used the ancient Greek word pithos in his poem Works and Days. A pithos was a substantial earthenware vessel used to store goods such as grain, olive oil, or wine. It was much larger and more practical than the small box suggested by the modern phrase “Pandora’s box.”
The “box” wording developed through later translation history. In Renaissance Latin, the Greek vessel was rendered as pyxis, a word associated with a box or container. That shift helped create the familiar English expression. The myth itself does not originally describe a hinged box in the modern sense.
The container is sometimes confused with an ordinary amphora, but amphorae generally had two handles and a narrower shape. Pithoi were often large, rounded storage jars, sometimes kept partly underground. The difference matters because the jar is part of the story’s ancient cultural setting.