The original Greek name for the container commonly called Pandora’s box was pithos.
A pithos was a large ceramic storage jar used in the ancient Greek world. Such jars could hold grain, oil, wine, or other goods, and some were tall enough to be comparable to a modern barrel. Hesiod used the word pithos when describing the vessel associated with Pandora.
The “box” wording became standard through later transmission and translation. The Latin writer Erasmus helped popularize the idea of a box by translating the Greek term as pyxis, a word for a small container. English then inherited the familiar phrase “Pandora’s box.”
This is one of the myth’s most common factual mix-ups. The object was not originally a hinged box, and the jar detail matters because it connects the story to real storage practices in ancient Greece. The myth itself is preserved in literary sources rather than in a surviving physical artifact.