Although embalming was unusual and regarded as mainly an Egyptian practice, it is mentioned in Latin literature, with several instances documented by archaeology in Rome and throughout the Empire, as far afield as Gaul. Toynbee speculates that a number of these could have been the work of Egyptian priests of Isis and Serapis, in service of clients, converts or just people who liked the idea of this form of preservation. Since elite funerals required complex and time-consuming arrangements, the body had to be preserved in the meantime, whether it was destined for burial or cremation. The emperor Nero promoted his dead wife Poppaea as a goddess of the Roman state, with divine honours at state expense but broke with imperial tradition and convention by having her embalmed and entombed after the Egyptian manner, rather than cremated.