What is the "Seven Wonders of the World"? Preface

Each of us more than once in my life heard the expression "Seven Wonders of the World". Many times we were wondering what kind of miracles, and why they just seven? To answer these questions, we certainly can not, because I firmly know and can speak only about the existence of one of them - the Egyptian pyramids. It is believed that the wonders of the world created for the huge amount of time for c XXX III century BC. Many great events happened during this time - entire populations have disappeared from the face of the earth, some civilization replaced by others. But art and the concept of beauty originated long before all this, they were accompanied by changes and left its mark on the religions, philosophies and concepts of beauty in different nations. Times are tough, and sometimes people who callously destroyed monuments of beauty, and consequently many of them remained only ruins. In the most ideal position to keep such a miracle of light, like the Egyptian pyramids. On the existence of some of the seven wonders of the world we learn from the narratives of the ancient Greek historian - Herodotus. Know about the rest of the chronicles of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Of course, miracles were much larger than seven, but has traditionally allocated seven - they have preserved for us the historical data: the first and most ancient wonder of the pyramids are the Egyptian Pharaohs, followed by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon:    Temple of Artemis at Ephesus:    Statue of Zeus at Olympia:    Mausoleum of Halicarnassus:   and, finally, the Colossus of Rhodes   and the Lighthouse of Alexandria (on the island of Pharos). Why is that the wonders of the world still had it seven? The ancient Greeks attributed to the number "seven" highest perfection. They believed that this number has magical powers and therefore contributes to the fullest being. Seven wonders of the world have been celebrated in verse and prose, scholars of antiquity wrote about them. According to all these sources of the seven wonders of the world were truly great works of ancient masters, they boggle the imagination of his contemporaries monumentality and beauty. Now we often hear the phrase "This is the eighth wonder of the world" - a reference to a desire to join the magnificent seven, but let us not rewrite the history of our manners, and leave the achievement of the great cultures of intact for posterity.