Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 22 hours ago
According to the Ancient Greks, seven is a mystical number that represents “perfection and plenty”. It’s enough to make a decent-sized list, but not too many to remember. In Ancient Egypt, 7 was a divine number. Pharaohs ordered lists in sevens and multiples of sevens, and in measurements, there were seven palms in one cubit.
It seems we’ve always had a fascination with the number 7. It appears in ancient myths such as Aeschylus’ play Seven Against Thebes written in 467 BCE, the idea of 7th heaven has its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, and there are the oh so famous 7 hills of Rome. According to the Christian bible, we have 7 days in a week because the Christian god created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. In the Ancient world, the 7 day week was based on the planets that could be seen with the naked eye: The sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Yes, they called the sun and the moon a planet, don’t think too much into this, it’s like how we used to call Pluto a planet before it got unjustly demoted.
According to the Ancient Greks, seven is a mystical number that represents “perfection and plenty”. It’s enough to make a decent-sized list, but not too many to remember. In Ancient Egypt, 7 was a divine number. Pharaohs ordered lists in sevens and multiples of sevens, and in measurements, there were seven palms in one cubit.
It seems we’ve always had a fascination with the number 7. It appears in ancient myths such as Aeschylus’ play Seven Against Thebes written in 467 BCE, the idea of 7th heaven has its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, and there are the oh so famous 7 hills of Rome. According to the Christian bible, we have 7 days in a week because the Christian god created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. In the Ancient world, the 7 day week was based on the planets that could be seen with the naked eye: The sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Yes, they called the sun and the moon a planet, don’t think too much into this, it’s like how we used to call Pluto a planet before it got unjustly demoted.
