The millenary effort at the understanding of the semiotic status of historical narratives has been prolific in providing many icons or images about the stories that historians write. In this paper we identify twelve icons recorded in the history and theory of historiography, which present us with the corresponding metaphors, all of them adding something of interest to our semiotics of the signs constituting our historical knowledge. We will, then, revisit: (1) sculpture, or Pheidias, in Lucian; (2) picture, in Humboldt and Ankersmit; (3) mapmaking, in Droysen; (4) a well-adjusted machine, in Fueter; (5) a pageant, in Birrell; (6) military planning, in Mahan; (7) tapestry and threads, in Simmel; (8) reduction from orchestra to solo instrument arrangement, in Bernheim; (9) a trial at the court of justice, in Croce; (10) a novel, in Collingwood and Porter; (11) medical diagnosis, in Ranke and Namier; and (12) puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) in the structuralist approach by Greimas. The study of the reason why all these icons differ from a supposedly “true” definition of historical narratives will shed new light on the semiotic peculiarities of such grand signs, devoted to communicating complex interpretations (intended to be true) about the temporal trajectory of human communities. At the same time, we face a study, within historical epistemology, on the ways through which icons work as modes of scientific self-understanding and of philosophical reflection.