Well, it all has to do with the Precession of the Earth. More specifically it has to do with Axial Precession.
You see, the earth wobbles on its axis, slowly tracing out a cone.
It takes the earth roughly 26,000 years to do this. According to Wikipedia the first person to realize this was the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (circa 190 to 120 BCE). Which tells me that it was probably well known to the ancients, possibly for thousands of years. (Hipparchus was possibly the first person to write down this observation.)
This movement of the earth is also known as the Precession of the Equinoxes, the Lunisolar Precession, or the Precession of the Equator. Of course the position of the stars changes in relation to the observer. This fact has been used to date many things from the ancient past, including the building of the pyramids.
So, what does it have to do with the number 72?
Well, it happens that it is the conversion factor for the precession, for it takes 72 years for the precession to travel one degree. And 72 also happens to be twelve times six. Which fits nicely into that Base 12 number system employed by the astronomers of ancient Sumeria, which began flourishing around 6,000 years ago.
MAIDEN TOMB is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses folktale. The fact that there are twelve princesses also points in that direction, raising the possibility that this lesser-known folktale may have originated in what we now call the Middle East thousands of years ago.
