Ancient Egypt and Babylon developed intricate astrology/astronomy (the two are identical until well into the Scientific Revolution) systems, it's true. But so did--for example--ancient Greece, India, China. Rome and then the medieval Arab and Christian worlds inherited the Greek tradition. In medieval Europe--forested, cloudy Europe--astronomy (slash astrology) was one of the seven liberal arts, equal to math (geometry and arithmetic) in the foundational course of intellectual study.

In 15th and 16th century Europe, the heavens were all the rage. Kings and princes had their court astrologers, but literate Germans and Italians in particular couldn't get enough of cheap pamphlets and broadsheets that explained how to read the signs in the heavens. And if it seems "only natural" that people would be interested in knowledge of the future (but remember, "astronomy" in ancient Egypt and Sumer is also astrology): as widespread belief in the predictive power of stars and planets faded in early modern Europe, astronomy maintained its seductive power. Its observational (as opposed to experimental) nature made it, in a sense, the accessible science to the educated but not academic public. In fact, at a time when we are still counting off individual women earning their doctorates at universities (the first, the second, the first in math, etc.), women made up 14% of professional astronomers in the Holy Roman Empire. Obviously they still faced enormous obstacles--Maria Winkelmann basically had to marry the head of the Berlin Observatory to keep working, and after his death the position went to his (less experienced and knowledgeable) son instead of to her--but only reinforces what a strong hold the stars held on people's imaginations in foggy, cloudy, forested--but non light polluted pre-industrial Europe.