Working with a team of experts and alongside students from New York University, Murray channeled his inner Indiana Jones and spent a week in 2006 on the ancient island of Yeronisos off the western coast of Cyprus.
The island, believed to have been occupied during Cleopatra's reign and remaining untouched for centuries, has been the site of excavations since the early 1980s. Remains including coins, glass, and pots etched in Greek script correspond with Egypt's governing control of Cyprus during this time. The remains of a massive structure with an inscription mentioning the god Apollo suggests that this was a place of sanctuary, giving the island the ancient name of "Sacred Island."
Founded in 1992, the Yeronisos Island Expedition's Exec-U-Dig program invites anyone from doctors to soccer moms to actors to join in their digs – for a donation of $10,000.
Why did Murray choose to step into the past and get his hands dirty with the excavation team? For the same reason he does anything: because he felt like it.
