> But if you want to go to Oxford and spend 5-10 years learning ancient dialects and writing systems, it could be quite rewarding.
What of an online course?
What of an online course?
http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/cuneiformrevealed/in...
The site itself is a public outreach site about divination during the late Assyrian empire (c. 680 - 620 BC), so there's a lot of interesting information on there.
You'll need to install a Unicode cuneiform font if one isn't already present on your system. Unhelpfully, Unicode doesn't distinguish between cuneiform sign forms from 2000 BC and those from c.800 BC, which are graphically simplified and easier to learn for a beginner (though less aesthetically pleasing). The 800 BC signs (called the 'Neo-Assyrian' script) are usually those taught in a first-year Akkadian class.
The 'CuneiformNA' font is available for download here: http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/help/visitingoracc/fonts/
Also on that page is a CuneiformOB (Old Babylonian) font, for the 2000BC sign forms.
Alternatively, Google provide a cuneiform font as part of their Noto project. These are also Old Babylonian sign forms:
The primary issue though is that the source material isn't digitized yet.
Admittedly there are swathes of cuneiform tablets which aren't available online yet (for example the OA texts, Old Babylonian letters, many tablets that haven't even been entered into museum catalogues yet) but the online corpus presents some very rich material.
There is also a Github repository https://github.com/oracc
(NB I am not affiliated with Oracc but I do use it heavily for research and am a big fan!)