I'm having trouble with the plotline in the middle of the AP.
The entire point of the gigantic research project that dominates adv3 is learn that Cisitek is relevant to the Forgotten Pharaoh, and to find where Cisitek's Tomb is. This was super-secret and lost information, and adv3 really puts the PCs through the wringer to find this out.
However, once the PCs travel through the Parched Dunes, they find out that the Cultists have already looted Cisitek's body. Huh? How did they know to do this?
(Oh, and furthermore, they've set up base just a few miles away.)
How were they able to find the Tomb?
Or when the Forgotten Pharaoh possessed (I forget her name), did s/he just remember where Cisitek was buried, and head straight there? If so, why did s/he only *just* recover the body? And why is he still in the Parched Dunes?
I'm both looking for the "behind the GM's screen" answer, as well as advice on how to handle the "WTF moment" my players will have after going through all the trials of adv3 to only discover "haha, got here first!", which won't make any sense to them.
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I like to think of it like this:
FP has a pretty F'd up mind, fragmented between the desires of Hakotep and whatever humanity she has left after eating his heart. By all logic, they should be camped out at the Khepsutanem instead of the far other side (N-S wise) of Osirion.
The Ib inside her doesn't really give her all of Hakotep's memories, otherwise they would be there already. His "emotion, thought, will and intention" of the Ib only gives her one clear path toward that end "Chisisek, Ba, Ka." FP was an academic of sorts prior to her FP'ness, so maybe she had access to be able to find Chisisek, but without really knowing what else she was looking for had no idea about the Khepsutanem.
This could add into her desire to get the Mask to combine the Ib and Ka and hopefully get some more of Hakotep's actual sapience, perhaps to remember what/where the Khepsutanem is and be able to figure out how to get the Ba back.
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I'll second what Archmagi said - that's how I played it. The background I fleshed out there was that the Pharaoh had made their way to Eto after being awakened in Sothis and from there hired the girtablilu mercenaries and departed into the desert. While they were able to find the Sphinx itself easily enough (owing to Serethet's memories) the Pharaoh could not remember how to bring down the flying pyramid that held his body - knowing that the architect could tell him though he had his cultists begin scouring the desert for his tomb. Technically, the Pharaoh might never have known precisely where the architect's tomb was - Chissisek was killed after the Pharaoh's death and it may have only been known to the Akhumen where the exact location was.
As to why it took so long for the Pharaoh to find the body - presumably the cultists were delayed after running into fierce opposition within the Sphinx and then had to spend several months combing the desert searching for the pyramid (with less clues than the players). Keep in mind they aren't just 'a few miles away' - each hex is 12 miles across, the Sightless Sphinx is 100 miles or so north of the architect's tomb. My players have just now reached the Sphinx after four months in the desert (and a month of that was after discovering the tomb moving north towards the Sphinx), and that's with me cutting out the maftet/Sekhmet temple subplot by having Jamirah's notes include rough directions to their HQ (due to the players already being a level higher than they should be).
That should help with the behind the scenes answer. As for the 'WTF, why are they here?" moment from the players - well, why are the players after the body of Chissisek? That should provide some answer. Otherwise you can play it close to your chest