Question

Now you might remember the names of the Seven Wonders, but do you know why 'seven' was such an auspicious number in ancient cultures?

Answer 1

Number seven was considered to be a lucky number in ancient times. Before the invention of the telescope only seven planets were visible, they were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, the sun and the moon. May be because of this the ancient cultures adopted seven gods or dieties.

Pythagoreans considered seven to be a perfect number. Hinduism recognized seven major energy centres or chakras in the human body. There were seven lucky gods who brought good fortune in the Japanese tradition. The Arabs built seven holy temples.

Number seven has been universal. For example, there are seven days in a week, seven notes in a musical scale, seven colours in a rainbow, seven seas, seven continents, and seven wonders of the world.

Answer 2

Way before technology developed, the ancient people believed that God was the creator of everything and since there was the discovery of 7 planets, it was taken for granted that 7 was the number of God.

In the Bible, the number 7 has been believed to be a number of spiritual perfection and so, it appears 287 times in the Bible and it stamped on all works of God. The Angels have been linked with the number 7 and according to Genesis, God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. In the Book of Genesis, the word 'created' has been used 7 times.

So, the number 7 became a lucky and auspicious number.

New discoveries and inventions also started having 7 elements. Like the 7 colours in a rainbow, 7 days in a week, 7 chakras in the human body, 7 continents in the world, 7 major seas in the world, etc.

So, it was obvious that there would be the 7 wonders of the World.