★ ECLIPSE Almanac page 13 ★

The Greek alphabet appropriates the syllabic sign system of the Phoenicians and modifies it at the beginning of the 8th century B.C., making an amazing conceptual jump by dividing the pronounced sound units of the Phoenician system into acoustic components, introducing vowels as a separate entity from consonants. As Anne Carson says, consonants become "unpronounceable symbolic entities" that delimit the edges of sound. Consonants become like the plastic contours of the alphabet.  

"The Greek alphabet revolutionized this imitative function through introduction of its consonant, which is a theoretic element, an abstraction. The consonant functions by means of an act of imagination in the mind of the user. (…) It is an act in which the mind reaches out from what is present and actual to something else." (A. Carson 1998)