The Thot Sign List. Recording paleographic diversity in diachrony

During the last International Congress of Egyptologists in Cairo (2019), we presented the Thot Sign List (TSL), the first digital repertoire of hieroglyphic signs (http://tsl.philo.ulg.ac.be). It quickly became an important tool for scholars and students alike, as well as for Unicode specialists who are working towards a standardized encoding of the ancient Egyptian texts (Polis et al. 2021). However, the TSL is virtually limited to the hieroglyphic signs that are attested in texts written during the classical period (c. 1900–1350 BCE) and barely covers the repertoire and paleographical variety of other periods. An extension of its scope towards earlier and later periods, as well as a geographically and palaeographically more balanced approach to the ancient Egyptian written material, is therefore a requirement if this digital repertoire is to become a proper standard and research tool for the Egyptological community.
In this lecture, we discussed two evolutions of the TSL that address these issues. From a methodological point of view, we present a way to document more systematically the hieroglyphic signs that are attested in texts written both before and after the classical period (c. 3000–1900 BCE and c. 1350 BCE–150 CE), and we showcase the first results. From a technical point of view, we show how the capabilities of the tools can be extended in order to record more accurately the different types of paleographical variations across time and space.