Militant Atheism

[Vishnu]

It more illustrates Eusebius' misunderstanding of Egyptian theology. A misunderstanding that was common in later periods as Egypt declined and was taken over by foreign rulers and understanding of the hieroglyphics was lost over time. That was an attempt by Eusebius to attack Egyptian religion as misguided and inferior to Christianity. Eusebius was quoting and commenting on the misunderstanding stated by the philosopher Porphyry who I mentioned earlier in the thread. Porphyry said it in a letter to an Egyptian priest named Anebo. In the Egyptians' response they extensively correct Porphry's misunderstanding of their theology at length and explained to him that they did in fact believe in an incorporeal principle and demiurgic reason. They further explained to him that the gods were ethereal, supernatural consciousnesses that encompassed and permeated all matter in the universe.

To my knowledge, there was no "Egyptians' response" that "they further explained to" Porphyry. The scenario was that Porphyry's own student, Iamblichus, disagreed with Porphyry's assertions here against the Egyptian theology, and so Iamblichus himself wrote a response to Porphyry while posing as an Egyptian priest under the name of Abammon, claiming to be Anebo's mentor. Iamblichus was not an Egyptian himself, he was Assyrian, and his writings make it apparent that he had some influence from the Hermetic tradition, which itself was just an amalgamation of Neo-platonism with Egyptian theology. But the position of Iamblichus and Hermeticism is all anachronistic, projecting Platonic philosophy and theology back to the alleged time of the fictional Hermes Trismegistus. Much like how Herodotus tried to claim that the Greeks got their gods from Egypt, in an attempt to try an extend the antiquity of Greek religion and culture, it was not uncommon for ancient peoples to try and attach their heritage to Egypt because of Egypt's longstanding and prestigious legacy. And many of the philosophers were no exception to this temptation, and obviously, Iamblichus fell into that temptation as well.
The majority of scholars today reject the notion of any sort of esoteric monotheism existing within Egyptian polytheism, be it the Platonist sort of monotheism or whatever. This idea of an all pervasive transcendent incorporeal principle or logos or whatever was simply not indigenous to Egypt, with the possible exception of the Amarna heresy, which was quickly stamped out and erased from Egyptian history as soon as Akhenaten died.
The idea of this sort of ancient Egyptian monotheism was popular in the 19th century, and can be read of at length in the writings of Budge and others of that time, but today is almost entirely abandoned by Egyptologists and is considered an anachronism invented by some Greek philosophers.
And also, as I've stated before in this thread- [Click], the earliest Egyptian religious texts do not indicate that they even had a concept of a dichotomy between corporeal and incorporeal, that only developed much later, and so they definitely would not have had a notion of some ethereal incorporeal principle until the Greeks came along and introduced them to it.

For instance, such as Lois V. Zabkar, who, in his work "A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts", thoroughly debunks the outdated notion of 19th century scholarship and proves that the Egyptian notion of resurrection, both of the deceased and of Osiris who they are mimicking, was understood to be physical, bodily resurrection, on EARTH, especially in the earliest periods, such as the Old Kingdom when the Pyramid Texts were written. It was only later after influence from outside cultures that the Egyptians gradually more & more incorporated ideas of a "spiritual" or incorporeal existence.

It appears that both Spiegel and Fairman consider Unas burial ritual as a resurrection ritual. Spiegel often speaks of the "resurrection of the soul," but on closer inspection it becomes evident that by that term he means the "coming-forth of the soul" from the grave. It seems to us that he should have used the latter term throughout his description and avoided the expression "resurrection of the soul." First of all, the "soul" or, more correctly, the Ba never died, and without death there can be no resurrection. But there is another problem here. The Pyramid Texts state emphatically that the king never died: "(Unas) did not die, he departed alive." Unas certainly died, but to the Egyptian mythopoeic mind his death was but a transition to a new life: "Thou sleepest, thou awakest; thou diest, thou livest." This is the idea that lies behind the statement: "Atum, that son of yours is this here, Osiris ... he lives and this Unas lives; he did not die, and this Unas did not die." Spiegel understands these words as being addressed to the Ba of the king, but the Ba is not mentioned at all. The comparison is between the dead king and Osiris. Just as Osiris was killed and rose to new life, so the dead king, identified with Osiris, through the recitation of the spell is made alive again. In other words, what we have here is the bodily resurrection of the dead king and not the resurrection of his Ba, which never died. To be sure, the body was in the grave, but it did not remain there inert or inanimate; special spells were recited to call it back to life: "His limbs which were in the secret place when he joined those who are in Nun are (now) united; he spoke his last words in Heliopolis. Unas comes forth on this day in the real form of a living Akh in order that he may break up the fight and punish the quarrel. Unas comes forth as a guardian of Maat; he brings her, as she is in his possession." The same idea of bodily resurrection lies behind another statement: "Thy body is the body of this Unas, thy flesh is the flesh of this Unas, thy bones are the bones of this Unas; thou goest and this Unas goes, thus Unas goes and thou goest." This passage refers to Osiris, with whom the pharaoh is identified, as Sethe observed. Through the recitation of these spells and the effectiveness of the ritual, Unas becomes alive in his true physical corporeality. Only as such can he be transformed into a Ba or an Akh, traverse THE EARTH and the heaven, find his place among the stars, and be in command of other glorified dead (Akhs).
With this idea of bodily resurrection we reach perhaps the most ancient stratum of the Egyptian conception of the afterlife, that is, a continuation of life as a physical corporeality - a conception common to other religions at the earliest stage of their belief in survival. Certainly long before the period of the Pyramid Texts speculative theologians first attempted to elaborate this primitive belief in bodily survival by differentiating more precisely between various forms of existence in the hereafter: an effective BODY, an Akh, a Ba as welll as other transformations the deceased could undergo. "The Akh (belongs) to heaven, the corpse (belongs) to the earth" is an emphatic statement indicating an advanced stage of this differentiation. It is to be remembered, however, that at ALL stages the BODY of the deceased was considered not as inert and lifeless matter but as A LIVING ENTITY which, with ALL ITS PHYSICAL AND PSYCHIC FACULTIES, FULLY LIVED in all other forms of transformation and without the effective role of which no continuation of life could be conceived. Truly, then, the Egyptian concept of man in his afterlife KNEW NOTHING of his "spiritual" constituents as opposed to his physical ones. - pg.81-83

So the Egyptian resurrection, especially back in its early days, could be nothing but a physical, bodily resurrection since originally the Egyptians had no concept of the incorporeal/ethereal/spiritual world. They did not have this dualistic idea, like the Greeks, of physical vs spiritual. As Zabkar elsewhere states-

It is understandable that many historians of Egyptian religion, confronted with the apparent dualism of "the Ba to heaven, the corpse to the Duat," have tried to identify the Ba as the spiritual element in opposition to the body as the material or physical element. The Egyptian concept of man KNEW NO SUCH DISTINCTION. - p.112

The dualistic view that man is constituted of two distinct elements, in the sense of the Orphic, Platonic, Gnostic, and Scholastic philosophies, IS ALIEN TO THE EGYPTIAN CONCEPT OF MAN. Though the ancient Egyptian was thought to live after death in a multiplicity of forms, each of these forms was the full man himself. For this reason we consider the Egyptian concept of man to monistic. - p.113

So given all of that, I'd have to say that the above quotes from Assmann, Porphyry, and Eusebius actually illustrate a more accurate understanding of Egyptian theology than that of Iamblichus, or even yourself, just based on what I gather from your post here.