[3] His father Alexander was a Judean prince, of Jewish, Nabataean and Edomite descent and was a son of the King of Judea, Herod the Great and his wife Mariamne.
She was the daughter of the King Archelaus of Cappadocia[4] and her mother was an unnamed princess from Armenia,[5] possibly a relation of the Artaxiad dynasty.
[10] After the death of Herod in 4 BC[11] in Jericho, Alexander and his brother decided to leave Jerusalem and to live with their mother and her family in Cappadocia.
He appeared to be an administrator for the extensive land estates in Egypt that were owned by the imperial family of Rome.
There are three princes by the name Phasael in the Herodian dynasty, all three mentioned by Josephus in "War" (BJ) and "Antiquities" (AJ):[17]