The key to cracking long-dead languages?

I am reading "Native Tongues" by Charles Berlitz and he devotes a chapter to this topic. Cracking dead languages is fraught with danger. In one tale he recounts how George Smith, "...an expert in ancient languages at the British Museum..." led an expedition to Nineveh in Mesopotamia, where he deciphered a complete story of the Flood that almost exactly paralleled the Biblical version except for the names of Noah and the Deity. "I am the first man to read this text after two thousand years of oblivion!" he declared "...and then lapsed into a series of disjointed sounds and began to remove his clothes in the presence of his startled colleagues. He died not long afterward at the age of 36"

Interesting Archaeological share .

Thanks