A foundation, with support from the British royal family, has been established to help save some of Christianity's most precious manuscripts.

The Prince of Wales is the patron of the Saint Catherine Foundation, which has been set up to help St Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, in Egypt, and in particular to work with the monastery's 20 monks to conserve priceless manuscripts and icons collected over more than 1500 years.

The isolated Orthodox monastery's collection of 4500 books and scrolls are second only to the Vatican collection in volume and importance.

St Catherine's Monastery also houses the world's most important collection of icons, according to the foundation. Rare encaustic panels from the 6th and 7th centuries survived the ravages of the iconoclasts - who destroyed images used in religious worship - thanks to the monastery's isolation.

The St Catherine Foundation was launched in London on 14 June in the presence of Prince Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, and the monastery's abbot, Archbishop Damianos of Sinai.

The site of St Catherine's Monastery is sacred to three religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism all honour Mount Sinai as the place where Moses had the vision of the Burning Bush and later received the Ten Commandments.

After the Islamic conquest of the Sinai Peninsula, the Prophet Mohammed provided the monastery with a letter of protection, copies of which can still be seen at St Catherine's.

The Anglican bishop of London, Richard Chartres, who is a trustee of the foundation, described St Catherine's as "a rare and powerful symbol of a long history of mutual respect between the world's two biggest religions, Islam and Christianity".

The treasures of St Catherine's monastery are so extensive and precious that the foundation and the monks themselves acknowledge that the resources of the monastery have been overwhelmed by the task of safeguarding them.

The foundation hopes to increase public awareness of St Catherine's internationally and to raise funds for the monastery's buildings and the collections. It has enlisted Camberwell College of Arts in south London - one of Britain's leading art schools - to help with a conservation programme for the books, manuscripts and icons.

Father Nilus, a British monk at St Catherine's, visited Camberwell for training in book conservation.

In the Sinai desert, heat can seriously damage books and papers, so a priority for the foundation is to create environmentally-controlled storage and archive systems.

For Prince Charles, the Saint Catherine Foundation brings together two long-standing interests - spirituality and conservation. Observers expect him to be an active patron because he is well known for his 'hands-on' approach with many of the causes he supports.