Sarati is an artificial script, one of several scripts created by J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Tolkien's mythology, the Sarati alphabet was invented by the Elf Rúmil of Tirion.
External history
As Tolkien strove to create a world that would feel authentic, he realized that for that to be possible, he must invent accompanying scripts for his languages. And, being a perfectionist, he acknowledged that a fully-fledged writing system could not have just appeared out of nowhere. Therefore, he set out to create a series of scripts for the elves as well as for the humans and dwarves that would indicate a certain degree of evolution and development. The first script for the elves was the Sarati which eventually developed into Tengwar by Fëanor.
Known as the first writing system of Arda, Sarati was in the fiction invented by the Ñoldorin chronicler Rúmil of Valinor in the Valian Year 1169 of the First Age. It was he "who first achieved fitting signs for the recording of speech and song" The writing system is officially called Sarati as each letter of the script represents a "sarat". However, Tolkien sometimes called the writing system "The Tengwar of Rúmil", where the word tengwar means "letters" in Quenya. "Sarati" is the Quenya name for Rúmil's script.
Description
thumb|"Sarati" written in Sarati, from left to right, the letter "a" shown explicitly. Usually, the letter "a" is omitted<!--as above-->, making this an [[abugida script with implicit "a" after each unmarked consonant.
Consonants
In accordance with the leading theory at the time, the consonants were created as the main characters of Sarati, while the role of vowels was secondary and were used to accentuate the consonants. The consonants, more so than the vowels, appear differently throughout the texts. Only the shapes of a select few sarati are stable, varying just slightly. The alterations of the shapes can be mostly attributed to Tolkien's constant work on the development of the script.
File:Sarati consonants (vertical).png
Vowels
As mentioned above, the role of the vowels was to emphasize linguistically and, possibly, aesthetically, the consonants of the script. Therefore, the vowels fill the role of diacritics, which can be pronounced either before or after the consonant. The vowel diacritics often can also double the sound or indicate an adjacent "s" or a preceding homorganic nasal.
Though vowel diacritics vary considerably less frequently than the consonants, vowels had undergone considerable changes throughout the years.
File:Sarati vowels.png
Features
thumb|upright|Sarati's punctuation marks
As Sarati was created for the Eldar who were ambidextrous, the script can be written right-to-left; left-to-right; top-to-bottom, from the right or left; or boustrophedon (back-and-forth).
When writing from right-to-left, the left hand was employed, whereas when writing left-to-right, the right hand was used. This prevented the accidental smudging of ink, and allowed the writer to see what had just been written. Also, as Sarati was meant to represent an older script, its distinguishing trait of allowing the script to be written in multiple directions is meant to mirror real ancient scripts that are known for their less rigid nature.